Many residents here don’t have meters because they are on private wells rather than municipal water systems. They have a different incentive to conserve water: there’s no backup plan if your private well runs dry. Fixing that problem costs thousands of dollars (maybe even tens of thousands; I’m on municipal water, so I don’t have to worry about my well running dry), and your life is miserable until you do. My town has three or four different water sources, so if one fails they can make do on the others until the rain comes. OTOH, if you have a private well you don’t think twice about installing a backup generator, because you need electricity to run your well pump; townies like me, especially those with dry basements (like mine), don’t always install generators, which can be bad if an ice storm knocks out power for an extended period.

“What do you mean we’re running out? That can’t happen! There will always be more! That’s what more means!”

“Dinosaurs” tv show. Even Disney gets one right, now and again.

It seems to be part of human nature to look at something beyond the scale of our understanding and to declare the resource “inexhaustible”. When the colonists came to the continent they saw to many trees to count, too many fish to consume, entirely too many resources to contemplate limiting use. And one by one each of those inexhaustible resources has been depleted.

If you are making a living selling a necessary commodity, and people are using less, it follows that you have to charge more for what you can sell.

I live 2 blocks away from the Columbia River and yet we have water restrictions here every June through September. It’s not because we are short of water in the river, but the city (or regional districts) have to pay to pump water out of the river and then clean it for use and with the very hot summers here as the use for gardens and lawns goes up so does the cost to the city to process that water.