On the rocks

My family gathered today to celebrate my birthday and my youngest sister's birthday (hers is tomorrow).

One of my brothers-in-law was sitting across the table and I pointed to his Cape Pond Ice t-shirt and indicated that I should have asked for one of those for my birthday.

So then he was forced into telling me how Cape Pond Ice, in business for 160 years and an icon on Gloucester's waterfront, is in trouble because of the water rates in that city.

Gloucester citizens pay a whopping $7.52 per 1,000 gallons; if the business were here, it would pay $4.99 per hundred cubic feet. What the heck?

Scott Memhard, president of Cape Pond Ice, writes on June 30, 2008, to the Gloucester Daily Times (sister to our own Daily News):

Without a reliable source of ice — one of those core "hub" services for the fleet — there will no longer be a fishing industry in the port of Gloucester. Cape Pond Ice was founded 160 years ago specifically to be a reliable source of ice for the fleet.

Cape Pond Ice is in the frozen water business. Water is not only our main ingredient, but we also use water in our refrigeration and manufacturing processes. We use a great deal of water, and we pay the same rate as a homeowner filling an ice cube tray in the fridge ...

Cape Pond Ice Co. competes with the ice company in New Bedford to serve the commercial fishing industry. The water rate in New Bedford was increased last year for the first time in a number of years, by 20 cents per 1,000 gallons, from $1.40 up to $1.60 per 1,000 gallons. This compares to Gloucester's current $7.52* per 1,000 gallons, which is up from $3.03 in 2000, and up from 78 cents per 1,000 gallons in 1983, when I got into the ice business, and rates were discounted to support Gloucester's industrial water users.

Gloucester's water rate is proposed now to increase $1.59 to $9.11 per 1,000 gallons — a 1,200 percent increase over 25 years. My cost for water now is 470 percent higher than my New Bedford ice company competitor, and about to increase to some 570 percent higher.

*From the City of Gloucester web site, it looks as if the FY09 water rate is $7.83 per 1,000 gallons. Complicating matters is this paragraph in a July 8 report in the Gloucester paper: [Public Works Director Michael] Hale said the cost of the water system was not significantly changed, leaving the need for a rate of $9.11, up 15 percent from the $7.92 rate for this year.

Let's ignore those 3 different quoted rates, shall we?

First of all, what a shame that a city can't help out its businesses (and yes, there is innuendo in that statement) and second, why does Newburyport go by cubic foot when many other places seem to go by the gallon? What, what, what?

Oh, OK, scrolling down the appropriate page on the city's website, I see that 100 cubic feet is equal to 750 gallons.

** DISCLAIMER*I'M REALLY BAD AT MATH**

So, that comes out to .... roughly $6.65 per 1,000 gallons (for usage greater than 6,000 cf semi-annually). Plus there's a service fee on top of that, of ... what, nothing for non-residential?

I hear from family members who live in Gloucester that water quality is "variable" at best (I've seen it running brown myself), and Memhard notes in his letter to the editor that he also has to pay for filtering the city water.

Whatever the case, the closing of Cape Pond Ice would have an impact on not only the Gloucester fishing industry, but whoever else buys ice from there, including a lot of (non-fishing) businesses here.

Supplying municipal water is a complicated business, and it's bound to get more so as we go forward.