You want prices, let me give you prices. Not generalized, but exact. My city (Janesville, WI) has a three-tired charging system. Water is billed in quarterly intervals. The first 15 ccf is $2.19/ccf, the next 25 ccf is $2.87/ccf, and over 40 ccf is $3.70/ccf. Wastewater is billed at $2.01/ccf. Then there's fixed quarterly service charges for water and wastewater, but we only want the marginal cost for filling a pool. Given the three tiered system, the cost will vary based on normal water usage. We've only gotten three full quarterly statements at this house, the Mar-May one was 15 ccf, Jun-Aug was 36 ccf, and Sep-Nov was 15 ccf. Given we filled our pool in June, we have two datapoints to suggest our normal water use is 15 ccf. Therefore, any pool filling for us would be at the 15-40 ccf billing rate of $2.87 until we exceed 40 ccf. (1 ccf is 100 cubic feet, or 748 gallons)
Our pool is roughly 15,000 gallons. At 748 gallons per ccf, that's 20 ccf to fill the pool at $2.87/ccf or $57.40 for the water.
Now, there's another point to this. If you have a clear water meter to measure outdoor water usage (water that doesn't go down the sewer), they will subtract the clear water meter reading from the main water meter reading to calculate wastewater charges, otherwise it's all billed based on your main water meter, regardless of if you use 75% of it to water or fill pools. Our house does not have an
active clear water meter (it has one but the previous owners didn't pay to upgrade the transmitter so it's not currently in use), so for that fill we were also charged $2.01*20 = $40.20 in wastewater charges.
Grand total for our 15,000 pool fill: $98. Could have been: $57. Maximum charge it could possibly have been is $114 for someone with a base water usage of 40 ccf per quarter or more and who didn't have a clear meter.
I actually meant to pay the city to upgrade the clear water meter, but with the fence and pool permit and building (DIY fence install) I just never got around to doing it. I had inquired and it was something like $140 to upgrade the transmitter and $220 if I wanted them to replace the meter, which isn't required if it's still working but it's a 30 year old meter so its days may be limited. Obviously that's a lot of wastewater, but if we live here long enough it would pay for itself. Fun fact, when I was asking for prices the lady told me the previous owners, who had installed an in-ground sprinkler system and were obsessed with the grass, had paid over $600 in extra wastewater charges they didn't need to pay from the time the transmitter needed to be upgraded and they declined to pay to have it upgraded and the time they sold the house to us (based on my supplied clear water reading, since the transmitter is obviously no longer working).
I will be getting the clear water meter going again, cause while I have no intention of watering the grass on a regular basis unlike the previous owners, I drained the pool approximately 1/3 for the winter and that will need to be refilled once things start to warm back up. I've got a lot of grass seed to plant to finish fixing my yard from the pool/fence install, and I plan on doing a bunch of planting around the house and I'll need to water to get things established. Plus pool top-ups occasionally and spa water changes, but these are relatively small water usages.
I feel this is approaching an
@Dirk level response.
) but when I get access again I can check my log.
