168 THE THREE-CHARGE RATE 



England Water Works Association in its adopted schedule of 

 rates. 



This method may be less appropriate for large services, that 

 is to say, for services 4 inches and 6 inches in diameter and 

 larger, used for railroad and manufacturing purposes. Rapid 

 fluctuations in rate of draft from such services are often trouble- 

 some to small water-works systems, and a consideration of this 

 condition would logically lead to placing higher service charges 

 on these large services than would otherwise be used. 



It is further to be noted that if any very large part of the 

 whole cost were to be classified as capacity charges and were 

 to be assessed among the services in proportion to the sizes of 

 the services or meters, that the same conditions that were dis- 

 cussed in Chapter XIV with reference to the undesirability of 

 high service charges, would be met. Ninety per cent more or 

 less of all the consumers are supplied by meters and services 

 of the same size. The fact that all of these services are of the 

 same size is a matter of practical economy and convenience 

 and does not represent equality of conditions among all these 

 takers. To assess a considerable part of the whole cost of the 

 service upon the consumers in proportion to the size of meters 

 would mean that these differences in conditions among all those 

 consumers, except the 10 per cent, more or less, that use meters 

 of larger size, would be ignored. All the others would be put 

 upon the same basis, and this condition, from the standpoint 

 of the conditions of service, is not equitable between the larger 

 and smaller consumers in this class. 



In classifying pumping station expenses, it has sometimes 

 been thought that the output charge should include only the 

 cost of fuel and labor needed in operation and that the capac- 

 ity charge should include all the capital charges on the invest- 

 ment in such works. This view is based on the idea that increased 

 output means increased operating expense, but no increased 

 equipment. As long as the pumping station and other supply 

 works have considerable reserve capacity and are not extended 

 to meet increasing output, this classification seems to have 

 merit, but whenever the amount of output comes so near to 



