Pricing, subsidies, and the poor : demand for improved water services in Central America

Reformulating tariff and subsidy policies is central to improving water and sanitation services in developing countries. The traditional model of state enterprise service provision, coupled with residential tariffs set well below the cost of service, has generally delivered unsatisfactory results. Low internal generation of funds has impeded expansion of networks into poor communities and has resulted in very poor services there. Most of the subsidy has benefited higher-income groups. Reformers have proposed private provision to improve efficiency, cost-reflective tariffs to permit the systems to meet demand, and better-targeted subsidies. But is there empirical evidence that existing subsidies are ineffective and that the poor could pay the full cost of water services? Analyzing household survey and water company data from cities of Central America and Venezuela, the authors confirm that: 1) Households without piped connections pay a lot for small amounts of water from"coping sources."2) Most public water companies undercharge hugely, providing an implicit, generalized subsidy and accelerating their systems'decapitalization. 3) There is little income-related differentiation in consumption and therefore in effective piped water tariffs. Volume-based tariffs would generate cross-subsidies from the rich to the poor if the rich consumed more water. But the data indicate that consumption of piped water varies little with income, so most of the water subsidy is captured by the nonpoor. 4) Poor households that are not presently connected would clearly benefit from access to piped water supply. This would require increasing tariffs to cost-reflective levels. But where the urban poor already enjoy access, such tariffincreases would have a disproportionate impact on this income group. This impact should be mitigated through better-targeted, temporary subsidies. 5) The poor are often willing to pay much more than the present tariff for access to piped water but not necessarily the full cost of the monthly consumption assumed by planners (30 cubic meters). If tariffs were set to cover long-run financial costs, many poor households would consume much less. Improving the design of tariff structures and extending metering to such households would permit them to regulate their expenditures on water by controlling their consumption.Town Water Supply and Sanitation,Water and Industry,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Water Use

The measurement and reduction of urban litter entering stormwater drainage systems: Paper 2 - Strategies for reducing the litter in stormwater drainage systems

A previous South African study looked at the removal of litter from the drainage systems once it was already there. Yet the litter problem cannot be addressed in an effective and sustainable manner without an effective integrated catchmentwide litter management strategy. This strategy should include planning controls, source controls, and structural controls. The main focus of this paper is the source control of urban litter. It reviews international and local practice, and reports on the results of a two-year monitoring programme conducted in nine pilot catchments covering a range of different land uses, socio-economic levels and population densities in the City of Cape Town. It proposes preliminary guidelines for the reduction of urban litter loads entering the drainage system by dealing with litter pollution at its source

Why We Opposed the Buyout at Weirton Steel

[Excerpt] On March 2, 1982, the National Steel conglomerate announced that it would make no further investments in its Weirton Steel division because a higher rate of profit could be made elsewhere. In the same press release the conglomerate suggested that the 11,000 employees of Weirton Steel buy the mill themselves. Unlike the steel mills that closed in Youngstown from 1977-1980, the Weirton mill was relatively modern and was making a profit (1% on 1981 sales of $1 billion). Continued operation of the facility made sense

Phase Control of Squeezed Vacuum States of Light in Gravitational Wave Detectors

Quantum noise will be the dominant noise source for the advanced laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors currently under construction. Squeezing-enhanced laser interferometers have been recently demonstrated as a viable technique to reduce quantum noise. We propose two new methods of generating an error signal for matching the longitudinal phase of squeezed vacuum states of light to the phase of the laser interferometer output field. Both provide a superior signal to the one used in previous demonstrations of squeezing applied to a gravitational-wave detector. We demonstrate that the new signals are less sensitive to misalignments and higher order modes, and result in an improved stability of the squeezing level. The new signals also offer the potential of reducing the overall rms phase noise and optical losses, each of which would contribute to achieving a higher level of squeezing. The new error signals are a pivotal development towards realizing the goal of 6 dB and more of squeezing in advanced detectors and beyond

The Manager’s Dilemma: Role Conflict in Marketing

Norris Brisco, Melvin Copeland, Henry Erdman, Benjamin Hibbard, George Hotchkiss, Leverett Lyon, Stanley Resor, Clarence Saunders, Harry Tosdal, Roland Vaile: Who are these people? They are great men in the history of marketing, according to Wright and Dinsdale (1974). They are marketing heroes. But riot society’s heroes. Rather than hero, the marketing man is usually a villain in novels; he is the butt of jokes; and respondents to surveys think poorly of him

Mother of Perpetual Help Church of the Deaf, November 1, 1987

A newsletter published for Deaf Catholics in Omaha, N

Guide to the Irene Britton Smith Collection

Irene Britton Smith taught in the Chicago Public Schools and during summer vacations, studied music, eventually earning a MM from DePaul University. The collection contain her compositions for orchestra, solo violin, and piano and choral works and spiritual arrangements.https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cmbr_guides/1004/thumbnail.jp

"The sea is in our blood" : community and craft in Kalk Bay, c. 1880-1939

Bibliography: pages 220-234.This thesis examines the historic right of the Kalk Bay fishermen to occupy the area and exploit the marine resources of False Bay. It attempts to provide the historical base absent from anthropological, and other, works which have focussed on the area. In recent years, the local handline fishing community has faced destruction by a complex web of political, social and economic forces. This work shows that these have simply been new challenges in a long line, albeit the most serious, faced by the fisherfolk of Kalk Bay. The study begins with an examination of human settlement, and the origins of fishing, in Kalk Bay to the late nineteenth century. This is followed by an analysis of the organisation of the local fishing industry at the close of that century. These two chapters provide the backdrop for discussion of the commercialization of the local fishing effort, between 1890 and 1913. The fourth chapter deals with the establishment of the modern fishing industry in Kalk Bay, from 1913 to 1939. The thesis concludes with a brief examination of the community to the 1980s. Major findings are that the local fishermen of today are the product of a cultural and economic tradition stretching back thousands of years. By the late nineteenth century, the rhythm of life in the area was being rapidly changed by its incorporation into the social and economic orbit of greater Cape Town. Over the main period covered by the thesis, the local fishermen, as a result of their race and class, occupied the weaker position in conflicts with local authorities, the state and capital. However, they were able to fight dependence upon a single buyer and growing pressures for their proletarianisation and managed to maintain their independence as petty-commodity producers. The independence of the fisherfolk was nevertheless maintained at the expense of increasingly depressed local markets for their fish. Since the Second World War, the escalating political, social and economic subordination of the fisherfolk has progressively threatened the existence of the handline fishing industry and the fishing community at Kalk Bay. However, should racial ideologies and commitment to monopoly capitalization of the industry be set aside by the state, the Kalk Bay fisherfolk could survive, albeit in altered and diminished circumstances