A recent skirmish over the 1 percent’s feces is currently being worked out by the Florida state legislature.
One of the places that Jeff Bezos lives is a man-made island off the coast of Florida called Indian Creek Village. The island is predominantly populated by other billionaires and is colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker.” In fact, if you’re not a billionaire, it’s quite difficult to get in. The bridge from the mainland to the island is closed to the public and protected by armed guards and a sophisticated security system.
However, if the island is almost entirely cut off from the rest of humanity, the island’s inhabitants still seem intent on sharing one thing with members of the outside world: their piss and shit.
Indian Creek doesn’t have the underground infrastructure to deal with its own poop, so the solution it came up with was to funnel it through Surfside into a wider regional sewage system. Unfortunately, Surfside didn’t want the poop unless Indian Creek was willing to contribute $10 million to the community for future sewer system improvements. Indian Creek has referred to this request as “extortion.”
I work in municipal government in a different enclave for the super-rich (I don’t get to live here, of course). We aren’t 100% billionaire, but we do have several billionaires and 100% are multi-millionares.
We also don’t have the ability to test our own sewage and instead contract with a neighboring municipality.
But we pay for it. Anyone connecting has to pay impact fees. So if a sewer treatment plant costs 50 million dollars and a compound uses up 0.1% of its overall capacity had to pay 50 grand up to hook into the system, and any service line expansions required to reach their house must be paid for by the developer.