Seattle City Council Considers Water Use Limits

Seattle City Council Considers Water Use Limits

Seattle, WA (PRSN) - In the wake of today’s successful vote to impose a 20-cent fee on plastic bags, the Seattle City Council is considering a new proposal to limit water use in the city.

“According to a recent study by the University of Washington, water use is a large contributing factor toward global warming,” said Council President Richard Conlin. “The amount of energy used to create clean drinking water and treat sewage is immense and the resulting emissions of carbon dioxide are leading to the deterioration of our pristine Northwest environment.”

The proposal suggests the installation of toilet meters in all homes within Seattle city limits. The meters will measure how many times toilets are flushed each day and how much water is used per flush.

“We haven’t determined yet what the flush limit will be, but there will likely be a $10 per-flush fee above this limit,” Conlin said. “We believe this will discourage environmentally-unfriendly flushing behavior.”

The meters would also allow the City to discover people who skirt the 1994 law limiting toilets to 1.6 gallons per flush.

“If you ask most people what is the number one product smuggled in from Canada, they would guess B.C. Bud,” said U.S. Border Patrol Agent William Sanchez. “But it’s not. It’s 5-gallon per flush toilets.”

The Council claims the toilet meter would allow them to discover who has these illicit toilets in their homes.

“These people must be rooted out and exposed as the environment-haters they truly are,” Conlin said.

“Each journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step,” remarked Councilmember Tim Burgess. “We’ve taken four steps already by encouraging food composting, discouraging the purchase of bottled water, the bag fee and the foam container ban. The toilet meter is merely the next step towards our goal of reducing our carbon footprint by 50% by the year 2015.”

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(PRSN = Phantom Republican Satire Network)

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Update 08/31/2008:
This article is in response to the 20-cent per-bag fee imposed by the Seattle City Council on all plastic and paper bags used in grocery stores. The fee takes effect on 01/01/2009. Link