As residents in New Jersey prepare to pay for the latest budget increase passed by their state legislature—which will cost a whopping $37.4 billion—one state lawmaker is openly proposing a tax on one of the most basic resources that every individual uses on a daily basis: tap water. While we expect to pay out our hard-earned money for non-essential services such as car insurance, most people do not expect to have to pay for basic necessities. However, this is what is happening with this proposed tax.
Democratic State Senator Bob Smith is pushing for the tax, which he refers to as a “user fee” that will be forced upon residents based on how much tap water they use. He claimed that the goal for the tax would be to prevent conditions from resulting in rampant lead contamination as has been seen in Flint, Michigan, over the last 4 years.
“There have been some studies done on the water supply in the school system and in some urban and suburban areas and it appears that the more than 100-year-old water infrastructure is starting to fall apart and it’s starting to leach serious contaminants into the water like lead, and it’s similar to the Flint, Michigan, problem,” Smith told Fox 5.
Smith is proposing a 10-cent tax on every 1,000 gallons of water a home uses, which he claims will cost families an “average of $32” each year. The state senator has proposed a concurrent resolution that would include taxes on tap water and taxes on water diversion.
“The water consumption user fee would be charged to water customers based on the amount of water they consume,” the resolution states. “The water diversion user fee would be charged to any person required to obtain a permit from the State to divert water and be based on the amount of water diverted. Both fees would be imposed under a separate act of the Legislature.”
While Smith makes it sound as though the fight to keep tap water free from lead contamination is a new battle, the report from Fox 5 noted that “the state already charges a public utility franchise tax on water system operators of $0.01 per 1,000 gallons of water delivered to a consumer.” The current tax has been in place since 1984, and it was sold with the promise that it would “ensure clean drinking water in New Jersey.”
The timing of the proposal is also being criticized, as it was introduced around the time that New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a massive $37.4 million state budget into law. While the new budget specifically targets millionaires and corporations in the state, Murphy bragged about how much it would help public schools and public transit. But residents have to ask—if the tap water system is in such dire need of repairs, why wasn’t it included in the budget?
A year ago, government shut down and beaches were closed (for most of us, anyway…)
A year later, we passed a budget with huge investments in public schools, property tax relief, and @NJTRANSIT and gave the middle class a break by ensuring the wealthy pay their fair share.
— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) July 2, 2018
The proposal is drawing criticism from a number of people, and in an op-ed for New Jersey 101.5, Jeff Deminski noted that the idea that water repairs were not included in the new $37,400,000,000.00 budget is absurd. “If you let them get away with taxing our water, how long is it going to be before they inexplicably find a convoluted justification for taxing our air?” he wrote.
While the principle of the tax is theft at its core, there is also the fact that the selling points used to market it are flawed. The politician’s promotion makes it sound as though residents will only be forced to pay around $32 a year—but that is if they stick to a certain regimented water schedule, without factoring in emergencies or water leaks.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, residents in California will soon be scrutinizing their daily water use as a new law states that residents will be limited to 55 gallons of water per person, per day. Citizens who do not comply could face fines of up to $10,000 a day by 2027.
To put the allotted daily amount of water into perspective, a report from CBS Sacramento noted that “an 8-minute shower uses about 17 gallons of water, a load of laundry up to 40, and a bathtub can hold 80 to 100 gallons of water,” meaning that residents would have to give up showers on the days they wanted to wash one load of laundry, and taking a bath would be nearly impossible.
Rachel Blevins is an independent journalist from Texas, who aspires to break the false left/right paradigm in media and politics by pursuing truth and questioning existing narratives. Follow Rachel on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Steemit and Patreon. This article first appeared at The Free Thought Project.
a national aquifer like the electrical grid would deliver clean water and waterways or pipelines from flooded places to the desert .
in the future of space travel the only limiting thing will be clean normal toilets, the masses refuse to fly with dirty toilets, space x must invent a clean space toilet ans the object of this is recycled water is not taxed.
I posted on this article before a totally reasonable & cordial comment & it never showed up. I tried to post it again because I thought it was a mistake & got a message saying I’d already repeated that comment. I got off the site & got back in to see if it was my computer or something. It’s still not there.mwhich means that Activist Oost is now censoring on this new comments platform. I won’t be commenting or coming to this site again because of that.
Sink a well, get a pump, screw them.
The PTB are looking into taxing all water, including private wells. Their claim is the water is a mineral resource not owned by the people. You would have to pay to register your private well and pay to have a water meter installed and pay for the water pumped out of your own well. It may be that you end up paying the likes of Nestle as they are trying to privatize water and buy the rights to sell it back to you. All wells in NY have to be permitted and the state would like to make us register previously drilled wells for our own safety. Also, Many places do not allow drilling your own well when you are part of a municipal water system
Which goes back to a point made in the past, that we don’t really own our land. We mostly have FEE SIMPLE deeds which give us the ‘color of ownership’, meaning we get to use the land and even sell the right to use the land. But you don’t actually own it unless you have an ALLODIAL deed which have been practically abolished.
The entire country used to be allodial deeded prior to the fake US govt pledging all our resources and human capital to the bankers after the 1933 bankruptcy for their loan of fake money.
This is a horror that must be corrected. In the meantime, I’ll keep my well.
People in New Jersey aren’t feeling the love. Neither are the rest of us. If the states don’t nullify the federal government and recreate one that is lawful, we could all soon be taxed for the air we breath. This is not a republic, it’s tyranny. What are Americans going to do? Will we dissolve the federal government, or will we put children to work again so taxes can be met?? We are devolving as a society.