Do the math - Taps for Starbucks.

The Sun's title is rather dramatic, since Starbucks paying for the water kind of rules out the "robbery" aspect. Still, 23.4 million liters per day is an incredible amount for a 'socially conscious' firm. With 10,000 stores around the world it means each store lets 2340 liters go down the drain every day.

For the metric-optional crowd, that's a bit shy of 618.5 gallons per day per store. Or almost 124 of those five-gallon bottles you see delivered to offices and the rooms of trendy college students. So the next time you buy a drink from Starbucks look for the little spigot and drain. Part of what you just paid is heading down that.

As a two-fer here, the Sun mentions that water could supply Namibia with all the drinking water it needs and then makes another reference to supplying Africans later in the same piece. While noble of the author, and an effective way of pulling at the heart strings of the audience, it's nonsensical from the shipping standpoint. 23.4 million liters is about 6.2 million gallons which is 22,504 tonnes of cargo - per day. The energy required to ship this water to Namibia (or anywhere) is naturally enormous and that's why we don't do it.

Ultimately the problem with water isn't that there is a shortage of it. The problem is it falls in the wrong places (at sea, in high mountains, deep in Siberia).

Do the math - Family billed for 1.4 million gallons of water.

Over at FOXnews you have a report on a Utah family getting billed for 1.4 million gallons of water in 107 days. Now while the obvious answer to:

"When water goes through a meter, they (customers) are obligated to pay for that." - Craig Frisbee

is you've got a faulty meter, I'm more interested in just looking at this in terms of the real world.

1.4 million gallons is roughly four acre feet and this family has a two acre plot, enough water to drown their property two feet deep in water. On average, their entire two acres of land was submerged in 0.25" (~6 mm)of water every day for three-and-a-half months. During the wet season. And since the owner only irrigates about a third of his parcel, that makes it 0.75" (~18 mm)deep per day.

Of course they were also out of town for a third of this time, so that'd just inflate it further.

If I was the town, I think I'd forgive them this one. Unless they think this family was planting rice.