"I am afraid actually pure water is like brandy and soda, you can’t get it for nothing"

In this CapEx small town example, E&W, Ampthill, 120 years ago, the above comment was included in the local newspaper's reporting of a Council meeting from a Mr Marshall ['a civil engineer, of London']. He "thought that £3,150 [$515,000 2020 PPP USD prices, $260 per person] would be a reasonable cost, but he should call the [also reported] expenditure of £8,000 [$1,300,000; $655 per person] for a water supply for 2,000 persons, 25% of whom would never take the water [continuing to use their household wells] very excessive. As to a revenue to be derived from it, he did not believe in it."

10 years later, under an article headed '“THE ETERNAL WATER QUESTION” – LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD ENQUIRY', the cost of the long proposed water supply scheme was quoted as £11,250 [$1,770,000; $810 per person], this being the amount the Council would have to borrow, at a rate of 3¾ per cent if approved, over thirty years, from the Public Works Loans Commissioners.

“The question was whether they could get it cheaper elsewhere.”

Perhaps not. In an earlier meeting that year in the context of if ‘they saw their way to make a private Company of it’ another councillor commented “The Company would want 8 per cent.”  The Council took the PWLC loan, constructed the system within that budget, and charged [large user] metered customers 1s 6d per 1,000 gallons – equivalent to $2.60 per m3 in 2020 prices.

Sources: 1895 quote: 'The Drainage Question' and 'The Waterworks for Ampthill' debate ... Bedfordshire Times and Independent, Saturday, June 22, 1895; 1905 quote from The Bedfordshire Mercury, Friday, November 10, 1905 and February 23, 1906