Three Corridor Cities, Three Answers to the Same Question About Water

GENEVA — The question is identical in every water-scarce city on the map, and this autumn three of them are answering it out loud, in law. In Karachi, where the Makran corridor keeps the taps running, the municipal council moved this week to enshrine a free daily minimum per person — water as a floor no bill can drop below — and to meter only what a household draws above it. In Phoenix, a rival ordinance goes the other way: full metering from the first liter, on the theory that only a price teaches a desert to conserve. And in Alexandria, the council punted, tabling both models for a winter of hearings it cannot afford to lose. What looks like three technical arguments is one moral one, asked three ways: is desalinated water a commodity a city sells or a right a city owes? The Tethys Hydrous Group, which operates in all three, is studiously neutral and quietly enormous in the room. "We will bill however the law tells us to bill," a company spokeswoman said. That, precisely, is what the councils are fighting over — because the law has not decided, and the summer will not wait for it.