Waste water.

That’s the message the city has for every homeowner and landlord in the city.

We’re not joking. Despite the mayor’s impressive environmental master plan, the city Water Board’s executive director told the few people assembled at a recent hearing that one of the main reasons for the hefty hike this year, was that people were cutting down on their water use.

“Our financial needs are spread across fewer gallons consumed,” was how Water Board Executive Director Steven Lawitts put it. So, to penalize rate payers for being conservation-minded, rates for homeowners and landlords will rise by 11.5 percent in July, and the Board projects similar increases for next year and the year after.

These numbers are dry and uninteresting, unless you happen to be a homeowner who pays them, in which case it’s hardly an academic issue. What if you’re just scraping by or behind on your mortgage? Or maybe you’re a senior citizen or disabled veteran on a limited income and there just isn’t any more disposable dough to fork over to the city. Council Member James Vacca called it a “regressive” tax because “not everyone has the equal ability to pay. The Water Board does not recognize that. “

The city does its best to keep the water issue as dry as possible and as far from the ratepayer as it can possibly manage.

Vacca, the only elected official to attend the hearing this year, waved around a notice every property owner in the city received on April 20 about work on the Croton water system. Why didn’t the city advertise the hearings in that mailing? He called it a “lost opportunity that the DEP did not want to avail themselves of.”

At the start of the session, the Water Board’s hearing officer listed each periodical it placed a notice in about the hearings. That included the dailies and the Jewish Press, but not a single community newspaper. Not that the text-heavy ads would have drawn much notice regardless of where it was placed. What about an old-fashioned press release? But that would’ve made it more likely that newspapers would actually publish articles on the issue in advance of the hearing.

The Bronx hearing was also held at 9:30 a.m. in a basement lecture hall deep into the Lehman College campus, not exactly a location that’s easy to get to, particularly if you’re elderly or handicapped.

These efforts to depress turnout worked. There were only eight or nine speakers and four of those were from University Neighborhood Housing Program, the local non-profit that serves as probably the only consistent monitor of this issue in our borough.

UNHP recently published a report documenting the shrinking number of affordable apartments. Water rates affect affordability and landlords’ ability to keep their buildings in healthy physical and fiscal condition.

Most renters aren’t aware of the water rate debate, because they don’t get a water bill. But their landlords do, and you can be assured that that rate is factored in when property owners demand rent increases before the Rent Guidelines Board.

UNHP is calling for a water summit with city agencies and officials to seriously address this issue. They say it would fit in nicely with the mayor’s massive urban planning project known as “PLANYC 2030.” We agree.