106IRAN AND DUBAI LEAD THE WAY$245 a year later. Expatriate complaints elicited little official sympathy.
DEWA executives advised them to “stop wastage of precious resources.”^28
Rising prices created a more worrying stir within the ranks of citi-
zens. Dubai nationals commonly own businesses, and many merchants
complained of simultaneous increases in their business and living costs.
Angry citizens brought bills to DEWA headquarters and demanded
relief. “The uproar came as a surprise,” one official said. “The govern-
ment didn’t realize that people would complain so much. They didn’t
have a plan for managing this. [Citizens] were coming to the head of the
DEWA billing department and complaining. For some of these people
it was the first time they had ever looked at their electricity bills.”^29
Other citizens vented their outrage to tribal leaders, who approached
Sheikh Mohammed to pass along word of the discontent. “People went
to the sheikh and complained. There were a lot of articles in the press,”
a second Dubai official said. “After a few days the sheikh ordered the
increased prices to be waived for certain segments. People were coming
to the government asking for increased social benefits to pay their bills
because they couldn’t afford the new rates.”^30
Citizens reserved their most vehement indignation for the new water
payments, the first time Emirati nationals had been asked to pay for
water since the municipal water system was built in 1968. The revised
tariff structure gave citizen households a free allotment of 10,000 gallons
per month. (By contrast, average household consumption in Tucson,
Arizona, is around 7,000 gallons per month.) For consumption beyond
10,000 gallons, DEWA imposed a modest fee. Expatriates, who were
already paying higher rates and not getting a free allotment, also received
a price increase.
Securing water for the population had been a longstanding duty of
every Gulf ruling sheikh. In the pre- oil era, water provision was a key
indicator of a sheikh’s stature.^31 The onset of desalination ended the era
of scarcity, allowing water consumption in Dubai to grow unfettered by
the limits of its small underground aquifer. The city began developing
golf courses, water parks, and horse tracks. Crews lined roads with flower
gardens and date palms. Since water was being given away, consumers
had no understanding of the cost. People planted water- intensive gardens