[HN Gopher] The fight against drought in California has a new to...
___________________________________________________________________
The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The
restrictor
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-08-28 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lite.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lite.cnn.com)
| VectorLock wrote:
| The restrictor sounds like a great idea but it seems like very
| quickly the worst offenders will install tanks to buffer the
| water they need to keep their lawns green. Maybe 1 gal/minute
| across all their greenery might not be enough though but at least
| they can shower and do dishes at the same time then.
| amluto wrote:
| I'm not convinced that bashing the "A-listers" is productive.
| Urban water shortages can, with a bit of political will, be
| addressed by money. It seems to me that allowing people to buy
| large amounts of water at an appropriate price is just fine and
| maybe even a good idea.
|
| (Even at egregious CA private utility electricity rates, the
| energy needed to desalinate water is rather less expensive than
| the cost of residential water. Other technologies are less
| expensive. There is no water shortage per se, at least for
| residential use -- there is a shortage of water available with
| current infrastructure.)
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Buy large amounts of water _from where_? California has none to
| buy, that 's kind of what "the largest drought in recorded
| history" means.
|
| The problem is over-consumption of water, not "people not
| paying their fair share for the water they do use"; there's no
| budget deficit, there's a _water_ deficit. And when the problem
| is folks wasting water, the solution is to stop giving them
| unfettered access to this critical resource. They still get
| enough water to live off of, but nothing more.
| amluto wrote:
| One can buy out farm water rights and use them for
| residential use. Or one can buy machinery and electricity to
| turn sewage into tasty potable water or turn the Pacific
| Ocean into tasty drinking water.
|
| The Pacific Ocean is a functionally unlimited supply -- it
| just has the solvable problem of having minerals dissolved in
| it.
| Bud wrote:
| Not solvable at scale right now. Especially with climate
| change impacts folded in--and remember, the whole reason
| we're in this mess is because of the climate change impacts
| we are already experiencing. Those are going to get a lot
| worse.
| kortilla wrote:
| > Buy large amounts of water from where? California has none
| to buy, that's kind of what "the largest drought in recorded
| history" means.
|
| Buy it from the industries using the rest of the 85% of it
| that pay next to nothing.
|
| An incredible propaganda train has convinced people like you
| that residential water use is a large portion of overall CA
| water consumption. It's not and residential users already pay
| multiple orders of magnitude per gallon more than
| agriculture.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| The article is about residential consumption. IT doesn't
| matter that it's "a small fraction of the problem": _it 's
| still a problem_ and we need to tackle all of them, not
| just go "well farming's clearly the bad guy, let's ignore
| everything else until we locked that down".
|
| Go after everyone currently making the problem worse. I.e.
| exactly what we're doing. Plenty of articles to be found
| about new rules being put in place for industry and
| agriculture.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If you reduce residential use to zero (clearly
| impossible, but what's a thought experiment for anyway?),
| you've reduced water consumption overall by 7-10%. That
| means that every single problem you faced before is still
| with you, despite having performed the impossible.
|
| Low hanging fruit, and all that ....
| juve1996 wrote:
| That's a huge percentage. 10%!
|
| Frankly if it really is watering lawns and golf courses I
| think that's quite worthwhile.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I was somewhat skeptical, but it does look like this comment is
| correct on the whole. An average household uses around .75
| cubic meters of water per day, and it takes around 3.5 kWh to
| desalinate that much water using reverse osmosis (at scale,
| probably some best case. I didn't look too hard).
|
| On Silicon Valley Power (suck it PG&E losers), I pay around
| $0.11/kWh. So a full day's water would cost me around $0.40, or
| around $12/month if I were to somehow magically do this process
| at home. That is around 1/10th of my current water bill. That
| leaves plenty of room to still pay for equipment, distribution,
| etc.
|
| It sounds like the right time to build desalination plants is
| now.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| Looking at California's total water usage [1] I would guess
| we are somewhere around 40 MAF per year (I hope. That can't
| be per day right??). Based on the probably incorrect numbers
| above, that translates into around a 20 GW demand for water.
| The diablo canyon nuclear power plant outputs 16 TWh per
| year. Terrible napkin math puts that at around 12 power
| plants needed.
|
| Oof.
|
| [1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
| peterbecich wrote:
| Three months ago, a new SoCal desalination plant was
| rejected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington_Beach_Desa
| lination_...
| gruez wrote:
| >An average household uses around .75 cubic meters of water
| per day, and it takes around 3.5 kWh to desalinate that much
| water using reverse osmosis (at scale, probably some best
| case. I didn't look too hard).
|
| >On Silicon Valley Power (suck it PG&E losers), I pay around
| $0.11/kWh. So a full day's water would cost me around $0.40,
| or around $12/month if I were to somehow magically do this
| process at home. That is around 1/10th of my current water
| bill. That leaves plenty of room to still pay for equipment,
| distribution, etc.
|
| That's only the electricity cost. The total cost, factoring
| in operating costs as well as capital expenditures range from
| $0.60/m3 to $1.86/m3, with the lower end being $1.63 if we
| only include first world countries. That leads to a per month
| cost that's a few times higher than your initial estimate.
| amluto wrote:
| Let's compare SFPUC rates:
|
| https://sfpuc.org/sites/default/files/accounts-and-
| services/...
|
| W-1A (what a residential user in SF is likely to pay):
| $7.60 per CCF ($21.51/m^3) for the first 4 CCF/mo.
|
| W-25 (wholesale buyers like other water districts):
| $4.10/CCF ($11.60 / m^3)
|
| Even rate W-24 (untreated water from reservoir) is about
| $2.69/m^3. For all I know, the reservoir in question is
| Hetch Hetchy, but even this rate is above estimates of the
| cost of desalination.
|
| The obvious conclusion is that the actual cost of
| desalination is not even close to being a problem. Of
| course, this is CA, and it's easy to throw a few tens of
| $bn at a project and get absolutely nothing out.
| whitepirate20 wrote:
| I've been a long distance runner for 11 years now. I've been
| plagued with injuries, ebs and flows of progression and
| regression and the same attitude the author wrote about that
| matched his intense rides. It made me lose love for the sport
| running at a high heart rate every time.
|
| I tried swapping to low heart rate training. There is a lot of
| research in this area. My dad (58) also started doing the same
| and can now run 7-8 miles without getting tired. It's truly great
| to slow down. Not just physically, but mentally.
| googlryas wrote:
| Hopefully you don't have a flow restrictor on your heart!
| userbinator wrote:
| I've always wondered why they don't build more pipelines to
| balance the water supply --- many other states have plenty of
| water available.
| s0rce wrote:
| Very expensive, and its been done a lot already, see the
| various large projects in California to bring water from the
| Owens and Sacramento Valley to socal. There were various
| projects discussed to bring water from further away but its
| expensive. Water is heavy and you need a lot of it.
| juve1996 wrote:
| The entire west is under severe drought, from central Texas to
| California. California is an easy target, but the problems are
| everywhere and getting worse.
|
| > In most of the state, the drought has not yet affected the
| water supply, but South Texas and areas served by reservoirs
| along the Rio Grande have already seen water shortage concerns,
| Neilsen-Gammon said, pointing to the Falcon Reservoir, which
| reached "historically low levels" this summer.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Actually, they don't.
| ars wrote:
| I wonder what it will take for people to start leaving the state.
| And it's going to be the wealthy who leave first.
| mikestew wrote:
| I'm approaching retirement age, and that's been the fantasy of
| many for as long as I've been alive: CA either falls into the
| ocean, or people leave it in droves. And yet for all its
| problems, the population of CA keeps going up. Even if people
| leave, someone else is more than willing to take their place.
| halffaday wrote:
| I think net domestic migration is negative for California, so
| it's already happening.
|
| For perspective, I live in Arkansas and my family and I live in
| a 2000sf single-family home on 0.5 acres. Our mortgage is
| <$800/mo. My income isn't significantly different from my
| coastal counterparts.
| patwater10 wrote:
| Nice
| jeffbee wrote:
| This goes against all available evidence. The rich are the only
| group who are still on balance migrating _into_ California.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Do you have a source? I think your statement is only true of
| domestic migration
|
| https://lao.ca.gov/laoecontax/article/detail/265
| jeffbee wrote:
| PPIC regularly covers this topic but most migration data
| hasn't really fully incorporated COVID effects yet.
|
| https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/whos-leaving-
| califor...
| bombcar wrote:
| The wealthy can afford to stay, and the poor can't afford to
| leave. Watch the middle class, as those are the most likely to
| move first.
| CharlesW wrote:
| California has the largest economy in the U.S. and (if it were
| its own nation) the fifth largest in the world, with
| agricultural production/processing representing under 3% of
| total state GDP. There's lots of money and lots of strategies
| for mitigating water problems, including things like
| desalinization on a scale never seen before.
|
| In contrast, Arizona is relatively poor and landlocked. It
| seems like they're far more likely to be the canary in the coal
| mine.
| kortilla wrote:
| > In contrast, Arizona is relatively poor and landlocked. It
| seems like they're far more likely to be the canary in the
| coal mine.
|
| This isn't a great bet. Arizona had to solve this problem
| long ago and already has a good water rights system to cut
| out the most egregious users quickly as the Colorado river
| goes through its drought categories. Farmers aren't
| guaranteed effectively free water with seniority over others
| willing to pay like they are in California.
|
| Farming in Arizona might die, but the people are more than
| rich enough to continue residential usage with the large
| portion AZ gets of the Colorado river.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > In contrast, Arizona is relatively poor and landlocked. It
| seems like they're far more likely to be the canary in the
| coal mine.
|
| <<< New Mexico waves >>>
|
| ps. NM is _much_ _much_ poorer than AZ (but also has less
| people)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Arizona is a fast growing state but it's hardly a fair
| comparison. A better comparison would be Texas or Florida,
| which people on the coasts seem to turn their noses up at.
|
| Both are growing at roughly 3 times the pace of California,
| with Texas predicted to surpass California's GDP in under 20
| years (Perhaps faster, if things accelerate). If you look at
| the East Coast situation, e.g. Florida and New York, it's
| much more damning, FL's population surpassed NY only a few
| years ago, and its GDP will likely surpass NY in less than 5
| years (1.2T vs 1.9T). Not sure what will happen with the
| water situation but it seems like the final nail in the
| coffin of bad policies that have sent CA into a downward
| spiral.
| jpollock wrote:
| "Both are growing at roughly 3 times the pace of
| California"
|
| I'm sorry, where is that number coming from? 3x growth
| anywhere in the USA vs California would be majestically
| impressive!
|
| I found:
|
| Growth : (1yr, 3yr, 5yr)
|
| Texas : 7.35%, 2.24%, 12.32%
|
| California : 7.17%, 8.06%, 16.69%
|
| Florida : 6.45%, 8.04%, 14.91%
|
| Is the 3x growth in a different statistic?
|
| https://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/california/
|
| https://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/florida/
|
| https://www.deptofnumbers.com/gdp/texas/
| tuatoru wrote:
| GP was talking about population, not GDP. Do you have
| those numbers?
| mackmgg wrote:
| I don't think they were trying to say Arizona is the
| alternative California people would move to. I think they
| were saying it's the state that's going to feel the effects
| of prolonged drought first, because they have less access
| to seawater to desalinate and fewer resources to try and
| buy what little water is left compared to California.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Exactly, thank you.
| Bud wrote:
| Laughable. The wealthy are going to leave the best weather in
| the Western Hemisphere and the best culture in the United
| States and the best restaurants and the best job market and...
|
| Stop fooling yourself. The wealthy are going to double-down on
| California. They already are.
| hadlock wrote:
| In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban
| use ranges between 8-13%.
|
| https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF...
|
| Agriculture is effectively unrestricted by law in their water
| use. I think we may be targeting the wrong group
| plankers wrote:
| agriculture provides me with food to eat. lawns do not. i would
| rather have food to eat than useless patches of grass.
| karaterobot wrote:
| That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible
| but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst
| offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of
| environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public
| guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and
| drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of
| operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime
| things get worse.
| vippy wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but I see many fewer plastic
| bags drifting like so many tumbleweeds since the imposition
| of plastic bag fees and taxes where I live.
| j-bos wrote:
| Me too, but I'm not aware of any fees for bags at the
| stores.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Sure, but the stated purpose of these bans was not to
| reduce the number of plastic bags we see, it was to reduce
| plastic pollution. That would make you think that plastic
| bags were the most important source of post-consumer
| plastic pollution, which they aren't -- plastic packaging
| is. For marine microplastics ("the pacific garbage patch")
| the main sources are things like textiles, car tires, and
| of course fishing nets.
|
| The thinking seems to be "well, it would be hard to
| eliminate _those_ sources, so let 's make it so you don't
| see as many plastic garbage bags drifting around, and it'll
| _look_ like we did something meaningful. "
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's likely true, but what change has been made in the
| total volume of plastic waste produced in the area?
| Possibly/probably very little.
|
| It's an example of doing something easy and visibly
| noticable, but ultimately inconsequential, to create the
| illusion of solving a problem.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In Australia, when they did a plastic bag ban, the total
| volume of plastic waste actually went up. Instead of
| using flimsy grocery bags for their household trash,
| people were now using thicker dedicated trash bags. Those
| thin bags are some of the most re-used plastic out there.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| I don't think they have ever added one of these useless
| restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing.
| They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about
| their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points.
| I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on
| to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to
| really try and stir the poor vs rich debate.
|
| Meanwhile even if no grass was ever watered and no pool was
| ever filled it would amount to absolutely nothing since those
| things are measured in billions but the water used by farms
| is measured in trillions.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved
| on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth
| to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate.
|
| I understand these figures may not mean anything because
| private individuals consume relatively imperceptible
| amounts of water compared to (the agriculture) industry.
|
| But reflect for a moment that Kim Kardashian blew through
| over one quarter million gallons of water in June. [0]
| (There are other offending celebrities listed in that
| article. Kardashian is the most egregious of them.)
|
| I'm all for restricting and regulating agricultural waste
| of water. But surely some attention should be given to
| flagrant offenders among individual citizens.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2022/08/24/1119112184/kim-
| kardashian-kev...
| barry-cotter wrote:
| No. There's an extremely simple way to solve this problem
| that would work; Everyone pays the same price for water.
| If the government is not going to do that then blame the
| government.
| notyourwork wrote:
| That last sentence blew my mind.
| baragiola wrote:
| Doesn't agriculture uses its own underground water that is
| usually not used for human consumption?
| s0rce wrote:
| mostly no, although they do use wells but aquifers are drying
| up leading to salt water intrusion and subsidence. Further,
| most underground water can be more easily treated for
| drinking than surface water.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Some of the water used by each of these sectors returns to
| rivers and groundwater basins and can be used again.
|
| I'd really like to see what the percentages are _there_ for
| each industry mentioned.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I was going to come in here and say something like this.
| Targeting lawns which use maybe 5% of the water is the wrong
| thing to target, but much like recycling or air pollution from
| cars, the corporate machine has attached itself to the
| discussion and ensured that no eyes are looking their way, away
| from the "little guy" who is now responsible for fixing
| environmental catastrophes via individual action (which won't
| work).
| twblalock wrote:
| Agriculture is also a small portion of the state's GDP and we
| could do without some of the most water-intensive crops, such
| as almonds. There won't be food insecurity or famine if we cut
| back on almonds.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Totally right about almonds and 'luxury' crops. FYI measuring
| agriculture in general by its GDP isn't really useful. Stable
| food supply via agriculture is the foundation of the economy.
| It allows people to specialize in technology, medicine, etc
| that generate more GDP. The entire Ag industry is around 5%
| of GDP in the US and farms account for 0.6% of GDP. That
| doesn't mean Ag in general shouldn't get first priority for
| water usage.
| baragiola wrote:
| Degrowth is a loser mindset. Why not focus on getting more
| water, i.e. from the sea as done in Israel?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Because desalination is expensive?
| manholio wrote:
| Desalination is exceptionally expensive compared to just
| waiting to have water fall from the sky.
|
| You can do it in extremely arid climates, for example to
| provide water to cities, but it makes no economic sense
| when you already have huge amounts of free water that you
| waste on inefficient irrigation techniques.
| baragiola wrote:
| California is extremely rich. You have a water shortage.
| Water is important
| manholio wrote:
| Those three premises are still insuficient to warant
| desalination.
|
| "Shortage" means little, what we have is a restricted
| supply curve, that can still meet demand at a higher
| price. And if that price is insuficient to pay for
| desalination then it won't happen: when you build your
| desalination plant and try to sell water at production
| costs, you won't find any takers. They'll tell you yes,
| we have a shortage, water prices have exploded by 100%, 2
| cents instead of 1 cent, but they certainly won't pay you
| 10c for desalination.
| jonas21 wrote:
| California _is_ building desalination plants, for example
| [1]. However, these are expensive to construct and energy-
| intensive.
|
| It's definitely worth the expense to ensure that people
| will have access to water, even in a future with
| intensifying droughts.
|
| But is it worth it to ensure that people's _lawns_ have
| access to water? Probably not. Especially when there are
| plenty of landscaping options that have much lower water
| requirements than a lawn.
|
| A "growth mindset" generally refers to growing the amount
| of economic value produced - not the amount of resources
| consumed. Often, such growth can come as a result of
| technological improvements that increase efficiency. For
| example, more fuel-efficient aircraft allow airlines to fly
| more passenger-miles with reduced fuel consumption. Water
| conservation technologies - including some things, like
| xeriscaping, that you might not immediately recognize as
| technologies - are in the same category.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Ca
| rlsba...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Agriculture is also a small portion of the state's GDP
|
| Be careful not to fall into the GDP trap. This is a place
| where free markets looking for efficiencies will cost you in
| p99 events. It's one thing when there's a toilet paper or
| semiconductor shortage. It's another when it's food, so it
| makes sense for governments to subsidize farm production,
| whether it's though cheap water or buying surplus product, to
| ensure a stable food supply.
| gruez wrote:
| But if the state wants to protect its food supply, surely
| there are better ways to do that than growing overpriced
| nuts?
| PeterisP wrote:
| We're not talking about staple crops here, there's no
| impact on food security - in this context "food" means
| agricultural products like almonds and pistachios, and if a
| farm gets restrictions so that they don't have enough water
| to farm almonds, they can start growing something less
| water-intensive like wheat.
| lokar wrote:
| I can live with almond milk going up 50%
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| LOL. Sure, FEMA will distribute rations of almond milk and
| pistachios when shit hits the fan!
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| I talk with my friend who works in water law a lot about
| this, and he always comes to basically the same conclusion as
| this. Almonds and pistachios are a huge waste of water. The
| problem is that farmer's water rights are constitutionally
| protected (California constitution). You need a super
| majority in the California senate to do anything about it,
| and that's not going to happen anytime soon.
|
| IMO I think we should tax the heck out of pistachio and
| almonds and just make them unprofitable to sell.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I'd imagine the trees themselves don't even get much of the
| water. Could we find a way to get water directly next to
| the roots?
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Yes, we could but we don't because the farms have little
| incentive to invest in irrigation infrastructure when
| water is so cheap.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| You can propose constitutional amendments in California via
| the initiative process, I believe.
| Dave_Rosenthal wrote:
| The answer is to use taxpayer money to buy the water rights
| from the farmers who will sell it the cheapest. The state
| can then use it for something they deem more valuable,
| perhaps urban usage.
| rektide wrote:
| That sounds like a workaround for a ridiculous & pathetic
| inquity that never should have been, that has
| metastasized into a societal scale suicide pact. The
| state forever paying people to give up an infinite right
| to natural resources the state didnt have may be a legal
| answer but it's immoral & this buying-out "solution"
| keeps the injustice going uncorrected.
|
| Change the constitution.
| coryrc wrote:
| British paid out slave owners and abolished slavery
| decades before the USA did and without killing 1.5
| million people. Sometimes it is better to pay out an
| injustice.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Who should get the payout, the slave owners or the
| slaves?
|
| Incidentally, Brazil abolished slavery without a war and
| without paying out anyone.
| rektide wrote:
| Itself a perpetration of iniquity- the state spending
| vast amounts to make vastly wealthy immoral undeserving
| people who should never have had a thing further wealthy.
|
| Buying out unjust holders changes the form of injustice
| being carried, makes the illegitemacy less viscerally
| real & more palatable. But, imo, it's embarassing that
| law offers itself no options to fundamentally correct
| it's problematic past. It feels like a misalignment, to
| protect property & capital above all else, even in the
| most absurdly unfair & illegitemate of situations.
|
| Perhaps in places such events are politically necessary
| for change. But I dont think I am alone in finding that
| these past events & this present one reek, that it is low
| actions to escape the crime but still enable & make
| profit of the stunning injustice. To govern without ever
| permitting any actual rebalancing feels inadequate to
| build a worthy way.
| tagami wrote:
| We are literally exporting water when we grow these.
| bittercynic wrote:
| s/literally/effectively
| tzs wrote:
| ...in the same sense that we are literally importing
| water whenever anyone buys a computer (~400 gallons), a
| phone (~200 gallons), a polyester shirt (~3500 gallons),
| or a pair of jeans (~1800 gallons) not made locally.
|
| I.e., not at all. Most of the water used to _make_ those
| things doesn 't end up _in_ those things. Same with
| almonds.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Your analogy doesn't hold water, if you'll pardon the
| pun.
|
| The discussion is about water being consumed. Production
| consumes water, and when we then export the product it is
| reasonable to say that the function is, in essence,
| exporting the water, because the water is consumed during
| production.
|
| Saudi Arabia grows their alfalfa in California instead of
| locally. The only reason they've done this is to use our
| water instead of theirs. More water is consumed by
| industries which turn water into exported products, like
| alfalfa, than is used by all homes in the entire state
| put together -- including all lawns, pools, golf courses
| and parks put together.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > The only reason they've done this is to use our water
| instead of theirs.
|
| I've spent some amount of time in Saudi Arabia and they
| don't have a lot of water there for them to use.
|
| I also take issue with the term "our water" like you have
| some "manifest destiny" to seize someone else's property
| rights because you feel you are more entitled to it than
| the current legal owner. They thought ahead, bought
| property/water rights and are using them in a way you
| disagree with. Fair enough, pay them more than the
| utility they currently derive from their usage and
| everyone walks away happy campers.
| thfuran wrote:
| I always regret that I didn't plan ahead enough to be
| king of the world so that no one would have any moral
| right to disagree with my legal right to do whatever I
| want.
| grandinj wrote:
| The Dems already have a super-majority in the california
| senate, so that problem has been solved?
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| From what I understand it's not a democratic vs
| republican thing, it's a rural vs urban. There are enough
| rural democrats that they wouldn't be able to pass a
| constitutional reform.
| tffcccdredf wrote:
| fmajid wrote:
| Pistachios are a high-value crop, and other places under
| drought like the La Mancha region of Spain are also
| switching from olives and wheat to pistachios.
|
| Compare this to alfalfa, an ultra-low-value crop the Saudis
| are growing in California because they bought senior water
| rights, then shipping to Saudi to feed cows, essentially
| laundering water.
|
| Agricultural water is heavily subsidized in California, and
| the absurd system of senior and junior water rights means a
| senior rights owner has absolutely zero incentive to be
| efficient, so instead of installing efficient drip
| irrigation, they simply flood fields. But reforming the
| system would take so much litigation no California
| politician has dared to do it.
| missedthecue wrote:
| How is that laundering water? Do you mean arbitrage?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This is not just the story of California, but the entire
| US southwest. Unlike back east, where water is subject to
| municipal authority and policy (thus allowing a
| town/city/county/state to decide what the best way to use
| the water is, especially in times of actual or imminent
| shortages), the western states ended up with this absurd
| "water rights" concept that prevents effective policy
| making.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, back east water isn't life and death - in the sense
| that for the vast majority of the east coast, everyone
| has plenty unless you're a gigantic super metropolis.
|
| In the west, water is scarce and the most limited
| resource in most areas - and literally life and death.
|
| An old saw here is, 'whiskey is for drinking, water is
| for fighting over'
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Pistachios grow on saline ground and can be irrigated
| with high salinity water. And that is precisely where it
| is (and should be) planted in CA.
|
| We are looking at entire valley farms going to have to
| deal with salt water intrusion. Those farmers are hoping
| to cash in for housing, but pistachios would probably
| grow well in Salinas/Monterrey valley region.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Couldn't a ballot initiative do the trick? Has anyone
| been working on that?
| nradov wrote:
| Yes a ballot initiative could do the trick. However it's
| hard to get urban voters to really appreciate the scale
| of the problem or what needs to be done. As long as their
| home water supply works and the bill isn't exorbitant
| then everything seems fine. Plus even with a ballot
| initiative to change the state Constitution, it would
| probably still be necessary to compensate current water
| rights holders at fair market value in order to seize or
| significantly curtail those rights. That type of eminent
| domain property seizure would be extraordinarily
| expensive, and so politicians hesitate to propose the tax
| increases and bond sales that would be necessary to fund
| it. But the current situation is unsustainable, so
| eventually we'll hit a true crisis where some large areas
| literally run out of water.
| bbarnett wrote:
| You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how
| you can tell someone they cannot access water.
|
| That said, instead you make it illegal in... say, 5
| years, to irrigate certain crops without drip feeding.
| You _also_ provide grants to convert people over to it,
| for free.
|
| Of course, it's still very expensive to maintain all that
| infra, it clogs, needs to be monitored, etc, but if the
| whole state has to do it, at least it's comparative
| competition.
| kortilla wrote:
| > You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how
| you can tell someone they cannot access water.
|
| What's difficult to understand? Why should society be
| subsidizing these senior water rights holders? Nobody is
| saying they can't access water, they should just fucking
| pay for it the same way the rest of the world does.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| They do pay for it. Their use of water is profitable, for
| them. Whether it is profitable for society as a whole is
| a different question.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| They barely pay for it. Most of the people holding these
| rights pay an absurd fraction of what a city-dweller
| would pay for the same amount. That's the only reason
| it's profitable for the farmer.
| lazide wrote:
| They use different water systems. There is no single
| 'water system' or water source in the state. A senior
| rights holder has rights on a _specific source of water_.
|
| Water itself is 'free' until there is no more - minus the
| infrastructure costs to get it where you want of course,
| which can be zero to insanely expensive depending on the
| source of water.
|
| City dwellers are paying for the infrastructure to get
| clean, drinkable water to their doorstep at precise
| pressures 24/7 + any payments to water source rights
| owners.
|
| Farmers are paying for bulk delivery of massive
| quantities of non-potable/drinkable water to their fields
| during specific times of the year.
|
| These are not comparable things at all.
| Bud wrote:
| What does "you don't take away rights" even mean? And why
| say such a thing?
|
| Of course rights can, and should, be taken away, if they
| don't make sense anymore. And these particular rights
| clearly don't make sense anymore.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| There's always the proposition system. It costs several
| million dollars to hire signature collectors to get a
| proposition on the ballot. Californians could vote on it
| via direct democracy.
|
| Frankly I'm astounded some of the municipal water companies
| or development-oriented industries haven't banded together
| to make this happen.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because the problem hasn't gotten bad enough. Once it
| does something will occur.
| bergenty wrote:
| To you, but to the farmers growing it it's everything.
| trimbo wrote:
| No California water thread is complete without the Delta Smelt
|
| https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article256930082.html
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Agriculture produces something useful, a lawn does not
| s0rce wrote:
| This is true at a fundamental level in that we need food to
| eat but there is a really strong argument that a huge
| fraction of the agricultural water use in the American west
| is not "useful" or at least should pay market rate. Examples
| include flood irrigation which could be readily converted to
| drip and reduce water usage or growing animal feed
| (particularly for export), simply stop doing these here and
| do it in places with more water.
|
| This is basically a straw man, no one is saying to stop
| growing food to save water, but we can save a lot of water
| without anyone starving. Beef would be more expensive and
| some other countries would lose cheap imported feed (alfalfa,
| teff, etc).
| s0rce wrote:
| I think the best strategy is laid out for the Colorado basin by
| the Southern Nevada Water authority and could be applied across
| the American west, see the suggestions at the end with the
| first being the most important
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304-2022-8-15-n...
|
| Create new beneficial use criteria for Lower Basin water users,
| eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use practices and
| uses of water no longer appropriate for this Basin's limited
| resources.
| patwater10 wrote:
| Eh there's a lot of nuance within those broad categories:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-d...
| Someone wrote:
| I don't see why the argument "We aren't the worst offenders by
| a long stretch" would ever imply "we shouldn't be prosecuted"
|
| I agree they should target the other groups, but I also don't
| see why they shouldn't target people using precious water just
| to have a green lawn in a place where lawn grass can't really
| survive without watering.
| twblalock wrote:
| Because the sacrifice should be shared by all water users,
| and homeowners are far from the primary consumers of water.
|
| When agriculture uses most of the water, and the most water
| in agriculture goes to luxury foods like almonds and
| pistachios, it's ridiculous to be investigating homeowners
| while not asking farmers to reduce consumption.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > luxury foods like almonds and pistachios
|
| "Luxury foods" oversells them a bit. The retail price per
| pound is close to ground beef.
| zeraynor wrote:
| Sound like they would be more expensive if the farmers
| didn't have such advantageous water rights.
| greedo wrote:
| That's because their retail price doesn't reflect the
| externalities. Cheap subsidized water makes them much
| cheaper than if the farmers had to pay a fair price.
| adw wrote:
| Ground beef - all meat, really - is a luxury food.
| s0rce wrote:
| Beef also uses a ton of water, probably more than
| almonds.
| shlurpy wrote:
| They literally constitutionally cannot ask the farmers, and
| you need a very mobilized populace to change the
| constitution. That's only going to happen when people see
| the consequences of inaction, and its probably better that
| happen gradually for useless laws then suddenly for all
| drinking water.
| kortilla wrote:
| The people with the green lawn are already punished far more
| than agriculture. A farmer can literally grow 400 acres of
| lawn and not pay anything for the water.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Yes, we must sacrifice everything in order to save these
| unsustainable cities built in deserts.
|
| It doesn't matter if the agricultural users have prior claims.
| They should just realize that their worth is so much less than
| the coastal elites. How dare they stand in the way of the
| lifestyles of coastal elites.
| majormajor wrote:
| How many of the _13 million_ people in, say, the greater LA
| area do you think the term "elite" can plausibly encompass?
|
| Edit: If LA (or SF, or SD, or Phoenix, or literally any other
| city) runs out of water, it's not going to be the elites who
| have a hard time dealing with it or moving somewhere else.
| tomohawk wrote:
| All the ones at the levers of power that matter.
|
| It is utterly ridiculous to build a giant city in the
| middle of a desert, and then to cry bully everyone else
| into giving up their water so that the ridiculous city can
| continue its unsustainable path.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I'm originally from California, lived the last 23 years in
| Arizona, seen the writing on the wall and am literally two
| days away from taking ownership of a house 0.5 miles from
| the Mighty Mississippi. I think I'll never have to worry
| about someone complaining about watering a lawn or washing
| a car ever again -- other than lack of because I'm kind of
| lazy and forgot to do things...
|
| The funny thing is I was listening to a random radio
| program a few weeks ago and they were making fun of
| California advertising to get people to move there. Which
| kind of makes sense to do in Florida since they have a
| problem with too much water flooding neighborhoods at high
| tide or something like that.
| a1371 wrote:
| Unrelated to the article, I noticed that the article's page
| loaded extremely fast, and the reading was refreshingly focused.
| I had never been to the "lite" subdomain of CNN until now, but
| it's a reminder of what we are missing with all those news
| articles that take a while minute to load the autoplay videos and
| the parallax ads.
| kortilla wrote:
| Typical stupid California government response. Rather than charge
| the market rate for water we'll come up with elaborate Orwellian
| schemes to have people get visibly shamed and have to visibly
| cutback to comply. Meanwhile this reduces total state water usage
| by maybe 0.5% while industrial and agricultural use hums along
| each consuming far more than all of residential combined.
|
| This is banning restaurants from handing out cups of water 2.0.
| But now it has the added bonus of getting to spy and rat out your
| neighbors.
| shlurpy wrote:
| Water is a necessity. Making it unaffordable literally is a
| death sentence. Those who would mass murder poor people rather
| then have a yellow lawn are morally reprehensible.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Did someone force all of these people to move to cities built
| in the middle of a desert?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Do you want the food that is produced in the CA Central
| Valley (a huge, huge proportion of all US produce) or not?
| s0rce wrote:
| This is a straw man, no one is suggesting to stop growing
| food on irrigated farmland but to focus on efficient
| irrigation and grow things more suitable for the limited
| water, see the suggestions from the SNWA
|
| https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304/2022-8-15
| -ne...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Why do you think people live in the cities in the desert
| near the CA central valley?
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean, what cities in the desert
| near the central valley? Reno, Lancaster?
| s0rce wrote:
| Those cities (particularly Las Vegas) are actually mostly
| quite water efficient. Its ag in the desert that is the
| issue.
| jefftk wrote:
| You could charge tiered rates where the quantities we're
| talking about are incredibly expensive, enough to discourage
| use, without affecting what households that use far less pay.
|
| (Or, you could, if this was legal under California law)
| avalys wrote:
| The obvious solution here is to have a tiered pricing system for
| water, where the price per gallon increases with consumption.
|
| Increase the price of the higher tiers and/or rate of increase
| until consumption drops to level you need.
|
| And then you don't need to pay government employees to drive
| around and inspect celebrity lawns all day.
| lostgame wrote:
| Uh, that helps nothing. Outside of agriculture, it's entirely
| only the rich who are wasting the water (look no farther than
| the recent example of Kim Kardashian from just _this week_ on
| this issue) - it's not like the lower / lower middle class has
| lawns to waste water on, anyway.
|
| And since the idiots like KK wasting all the water are multi-
| millionaires or billionaires, of which there are a greater
| conglomeration of in California then there are in the rest of
| the states - increasing the price of the water based on more
| usage won't change a thing.
|
| Restricting the amount of water used by individuals in general
| is the only way I can see this working here. But the rich
| always figure out a way around _everything_. They always do.
|
| Same issue with the private plane bullshit going on. These
| people are addicted to an unsustainable lifestyle that allows
| them to throw money at anyone trying to put restrictions their
| way.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Correct. Increasing the price actually pushes toward
| guaranteeing that water is _only_ for wealthy people or
| companies and therefore not for the poor.
| lostgame wrote:
| Not sure how people don't get this or why my post was
| downvoted. Maybe it's just not a comfortable truth for some
| people.
| kortilla wrote:
| It got downvoted because it was uninformed and missed the
| point.
|
| First, the point was that municipal water usage wouldn't
| need and change and could actually decrease in rates if
| agriculture and industrial paid the same market rate.
|
| Second, if we are talking about lawn watering, that's
| absolutely a middle class thing in the vast majority of
| California.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Increased prices result in water being allocated to the
| most optimal needs.
|
| Marginal water prices mean the price for amount of water
| needed for a family to bathe and cook and clean costs much
| less than the amount of water for landscaping around an
| opulent home.
|
| If people are still too poor, then giving them cash (by
| taking from richer people) is the solution, not pricing
| water so low that it gets wasted
|
| Lack of sufficient water and excessive income/wealth gap
| are two separate problems with separate solutions.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Prices for municipal use don't need to be raised. Municipal
| use isn't significant anyway, no matter if you're rich or
| poor.
|
| Prices need to be increased (or, in some cases need to
| _exist_ ) for agricultural use.
| wkyle wrote:
| The parent comment suggests a progressively priced system
| that would presumably allow for cheap consumption of water
| at small quantities. I think the comments here discarding
| this idea by claiming price sensitivity doesn't exist for
| wealthy people are unimaginative.
|
| I'm not totally sold on on the idea, but it is very
| possible to create a tiered pricing system that makes
| domestic water waste unsustainably expensive. The price
| required to deter consumption may be absurdly high, but
| demand elasticity will always exist at high enough prices.
| visarga wrote:
| > But the rich always figure out a way around everything.
| They always do.
|
| Buy water from their neighbours to hop on their quotas?
| wkyle wrote:
| If the intention of this idea is to allocate reasonable
| consumption to each person at low prices and quickly
| increase prices beyond that, then I don't think this
| wouldn't be a bad thing.
|
| Tradeable quotas can be an effective way to protect a
| common resource.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Most California utility districts do have tiered prices, but
| the first tier is usually pretty large, the marginal prices are
| really low, and the national press has a tendency to
| characterize even this mild scheme as "rationing" so people
| hate it.
|
| As an example, LADWP charges a maximum marginal rate of
| 17C//gallon. You can use as much as 650 gallons per day without
| hitting this rate. The basic rate is 3C//gallon.
| sillystuff wrote:
| My water district (in California), sent out mailers a few
| years ago explaining their new rate structure. They said
| people were "conserving too much" that the fees were not
| covering infrastructure maintenance costs. So, they lowered
| the price of water and set a base fee (charged whether you
| use any water or not) to $54/mo.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Well, how do you expect them to fund scale-free costs? I
| pay $60 water service charge and another $40 wastewater
| service charge, every other month.
| sillystuff wrote:
| My original comment didn't make a value judgement on the
| rate restructuring, but it is true that I think the rate
| restructure was short-sighted. By lowering the per unit
| cost of water, they are discouraging conservation. And,
| the base fee is quite high for even our median wage
| earning households.
|
| I believe it would have been better to have a lower base
| fee that does not, alone, cover fixed costs and make up
| the deficit by higher fees on those with high water
| consumption by maintaining a high per-unit water charge.
| The problem with this is that by not fully covering the
| fixed costs with the base fee, there will be seasonal
| variability in funding, but basic budgeting would
| mitigate that. And, GGP's point about such policies
| dishonestly being framed as, "rationing" by opponents.
| z3c0 wrote:
| As the saying goes, "when the punishment is money, it's only a
| punishment for the poor."
|
| There are plenty of mega-wealthy people in California who would
| pay the premium to maintain their image of wealth, no matter
| how large. It may raise more money, but I can't imagine that it
| would deter consumption much, as it's already the rich using
| the most water.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > it's already the rich using the most water
|
| That's not true. The main water use is agriculture, which is
| a pretty small portion of our GDP and would cut down usage if
| we raised prices.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Given the context of the article, I thought it was fairly
| obvious that I was referring to domestic use, but if it was
| not, I was.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Sure, but your complaint is that it's punishing the poor.
|
| The reason we need to properly price water isn't to
| increase costs for municipal use. Those rates can stay
| the same, or even be reduced.
|
| The problem is that the agricultural sector is paying a
| fraction of the prices that municipalities pay -- or in
| some cases they are paying nothing at all.
| z3c0 wrote:
| My complaint isn't that it punishes the poor, it's that
| it doesn't deter the rich, who are - in the context of
| the article - the primary issue. I just invoked an old
| saying to draw attention to the disparity. A tiered
| pricing model would likely not change anything for the
| poor.
|
| Agriculture and overuse of water is a different
| discussion that this restrictor does not presume to
| address.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| The rich aren't the primary issue, though. The total
| water used by wealthy people in their own homes is
| utterly negligible.
|
| The article cites celebs like Kevin Hart, who has used
| (gasp) 150% of what LA would prefer him to use. This is
| simply a non-issue. It does not need to be addressed, at
| all.
| sillystuff wrote:
| > when the punishment is money, it's only a punishment for
| the poor.
|
| This is true, but only because the amount of fines are
| typically identical regardless of income/wealth. Fines should
| be based on a percentage of income/wealth. A poor person
| being fined $1000 may end up homeless as a result. For a rich
| person, $1000 would, at most, be annoying and depending on
| how rich, might not be noticed even as much as that same poor
| person accidentally dropping a penny and being unable to
| retrieve it. Fine the rich person a more equivalent $100K,
| $1M or $100M, and their compliance level would increase
| dramatically.
|
| Fixed monetary fines brings to mind this quote:
|
| "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor
| alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal
| loaves of bread." -- Anatole France
| avalys wrote:
| What is the distribution of total consumption by income
| range?
|
| Yes, the rich use more water per capita, but there aren't all
| that many rich people compared to the rest of the population.
| Does the top 1% of the income distribution use more water (in
| total) than the bottom 99%?
| gruez wrote:
| >There are plenty of mega-wealthy people in California who
| would pay the premium to maintain their image of wealth, no
| matter how large.
|
| Good. The money they're paying for water can now fund
| projects to get more water for everyone else (eg.
| desalination plants, water diversion, or buying water rights
| from current farmers).
| z3c0 wrote:
| So... let them use up the water so that it's affordable to
| stop them from using up the water?
| josephcsible wrote:
| No. The idea is to charge them enough for their water
| that you can afford sources that are expensive but won't
| run out (e.g., desalination) to provide it.
| gruez wrote:
| The goal isn't to "stop them from using up the water",
| it's to charge them the true price of providing that
| water, and charging a bit extra so we can subsidize the
| price of water for the poor.
| z3c0 wrote:
| I think this premise is sufficient in any scenario where
| there are disparities in the distribution of a plentiful
| resource, as is the case in countries with privatized
| water.
|
| However, when the resource is no longer plentiful, it is
| unwise to try the "let the market fix it" route (always a
| popular one on HN), because the resource in question can
| be consumed much faster than the systems you are
| describing can combat it (or can even be gotten off the
| ground.)
| gruez wrote:
| >However, when the resource is no longer plentiful
|
| My previous comment mentioned acquisition methods up to
| and including desalination, which would make the resource
| virtually unlimited. If the rich want to water their huge
| mansion grounds and are willing to pay for a desalination
| plant to do it, why stop them? If they're willing to do
| that, and we can take a portion of that money to
| subsidize water supply for the poor, all the better.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious - what are the economics like for
| desalination plants? I feel like we'd see a lot more of
| them if they were viable, but maybe we're just horrible
| at planning and fixing things.
| gruez wrote:
| Here's an article I turned up while researching for
| another reply:
|
| https://www.advisian.com/en/global-perspectives/the-cost-
| of-...
|
| tl;dr: all in cost is around $1.75/m3
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| There are plenty of environmental issues associated with
| desalination, it's not a get out of jail free card.
| Obviously energy use (and even if that energy comes from
| solar it's not completely free of consequences) but also
| the brine from desalination can cause significant local
| salinity issues which damages aquatic life.
| gruez wrote:
| All of those issues can be addressed with money, which is
| presumably not an issue because the original premise of
| this thread is that the rich will gladly pay the steep
| costs.
| manholio wrote:
| > "when the punishment is money, it's only a punishment for
| the poor."
|
| And there is nothing wrong with that: if you are poor and
| waste 10000 gal watering your lawn during draught, _you
| should be punished_ because your are just as anti-social as
| the millionaire next door.
|
| I'm ok with that as long as there exists a free/low cost tire
| that covers the basic necessities of a regular family, so
| that even the poor are guaranteed a certain level of service.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| If you've more money then sense then this doesn't work.
| Restrictors sounds like a win/win for everybody.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I've done worked with or developed outdoor water use models for
| almost all water districts in the state of California.
|
| The issues cited in the article are a direct consequence of
| tiered rates. Districts become disinsentivised to reduce the
| water use for their highest using customers because thats where
| they make the most revenue. They need to show water use savings
| in gallons, but they make far more from high using customers.
| Its much more cost effective (gallons of water saved/reduction
| in revenue) for them to target users who only irrigate in the
| lowest use tier because thats where they receive the least
| revenue per unit volume water delivered.
| lostdog wrote:
| I don't understand. Isn't the point of tiered rates so that
| the _customer_ reduces their water usage?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| When water is a tiny percentage of your monthly costs, you
| could care less. For example, my dad pays for actual water
| used. Not sewer, he provides that himself. As a result a
| 35000 gallon a month bill costs him something like $25.
| They obviously don't use that much each month, but he isn't
| concerned by the sometimes high bill that comes in.
| zbrozek wrote:
| Suppose you're a billionaire. Quite a few of them live in
| my town. Do you actually care at all? Do you even know what
| you spend on water? I'd wager not.
|
| Someone down the street from me is not a billionaire, but
| the property tax savings of operating a "farm" (a vineyard)
| pays for a huge amount of water. And it's totally worth it
| for him.
|
| There's so many perverse incentives baked into California
| life that it's hard to express to people outside without
| sounding like anything but a paranoid raving lunatic.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Is it? One might assume on fce value and with a bit of
| charity that's the point. But districts are in a
| contradictory position. They are being mandated by state of
| California to reduce water usage. If they did so by
| mandating caps, this could work. However, their revenues
| would drop linearly with use in a flat rate scenario. If,
| rather, a district goes without caps and uses a tiered
| price structure, they can up the price enough on the bottom
| teir that the 'commoners' do cut back on water usage enough
| to meet their goals. However, there is a subset of users
| for whom price of water is not an issue. They want a
| putting green or driving range in the back yard. They want
| to feel like they are in Kauai or Maui when they sit in
| their backyard garden in Malibu. They already spend
| hundreds of thousands building a water slide in their back
| yard, what's a couple grand a month for the kids to enjoy
| it? You might think of these as extreme examples, but I've
| seen each of these. These people _do not care_ about the
| price of water.
|
| With tiered based rates a district can maintain revenues
| and can make overall reductions. These rate increases
| happen at the bottom tier to create reductions in use and
| at the highest teirs to maintain revenues.
|
| The result is that all of the lower and middle income
| regions stop watering completely, and the wealthy just
| ignore any water use limitations. Some of these water users
| use 10-1000x as much water as a typical SFR, 5000 SQ foot
| lot.
| avalys wrote:
| Is part of the problem here that there just aren't that
| many rich people?
|
| If there are a few people in a district of 100,000 who
| are using 1000x as much water as a normal household, and
| those people cut their usage 100%, that's still much less
| overall savings than convincing the remaining 99,990
| people to cut their usage by 20%.
|
| Yes, it looks bad that rich people can consume whatever
| they want and the masses of poor people are the ones that
| have to conserve, but if this is the reality of the
| situation then focusing on the rich seems rather petty
| and spiteful.
| manholio wrote:
| > These people do not care about the price of water.
|
| They will if the top tire price is $10000/gal. It might
| be politically unpalatable to push such prices, but it
| would surely solve the consumption problem without
| compromising revenue.
| richk449 wrote:
| Thanks for explaining this. Once you point out the misaligned
| incentives for the water boards, the disfunction makes so
| much more sense.
|
| If water boards charged a fixed rate, and the state taxes use
| by tier, would that better align incentives?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| What's old is new again. The restrictor device described here is
| more or less the same as the "miner's inch" that defines water
| rights in parts of California. At least in Nevada County, some
| tracts of land include rights to "miner's inches" of water. A
| miner's inch was customarily the amount of water that'd flow
| through a inch diameter hole in a wooden board that was used as a
| sort of valve at the irrigation ditch. It's defined here nowas
| 11.22 gallons per minute (the amount varies by jurisdiction). It
| doesn't sound like a lot but sure adds up quick if you're filling
| a reservoir or storage tank.
|
| Historically the water was used by miners to wash gold out of ore
| (or later, to hydraulically blast apart hillsides).
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Am I doing my math right? 11.22 gallons per minute works out to
| 1/2 a million gallons a month or so. That seems like an insane
| amount of water.
| jefftk wrote:
| Insane for residential, but not for agricultural irrigation
| mjgerm wrote:
| 6 million gallons/yr / 40 inches/yr (average annual rainfall
| in NY) = 5.5 acres
| plankers wrote:
| Good. The only way we're going to get these selfish Americans to
| sacrifice anything is if we force them.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I just want to make a note and an aside to the whole conversation
| happening around water right now.
|
| Aside from the 9000lb gorilla of ag/industrial versus urban/
| suburban water use, I think that its clear that tiered rate based
| structures are a clear failure. We knew this half a decade ago,
| but its become impeccably clear with articles like these.
|
| Its very very easy to see blame the millionaire/ elite class in
| this situation, but its important to acknowledge that the fact
| that these homes use 20-40% of a water districts total use has
| been well known for years. Likewise, water districts are not
| incentivised to decrease this class of water users overall use
| because that 20-40% of water use might represent 60%+ of a water
| districts total income. This is due to tiered rates. The reality
| is that famous person XYZ never ever sees the water bill and they
| just don't care. This is something one of their assistants or
| manager deals with, and relative to their income, even if their
| water bill is 50k a month, it just doesn't matter.
|
| So to be clear, districts, through tiered rates, have been
| incentivised to not act on who they already know are their most
| wasteful customers. Those most wasteful customers _do not care_
| how they spend on water a month.
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems weird to say that higher prices for the rich are the
| problem. It seems like they should be part of the solution?
|
| Yes, that means rich people fund the system. Ideally instead of
| just paying for staff and maintenance, this also funds new
| sources of water, like desalination plants, which benefit
| everyone in a drought.
|
| I mean, you don't want poor people paying for that stuff,
| right? For one thing, they don't have the money.
| kortilla wrote:
| Poor people do have the money to pay a market rate. It's not
| expensive if you're not trying to water a lawn.
| skybrian wrote:
| There are California communities where people complain
| about very high water rates, and desalination plants have
| been blocked with the excuse (among others) that it is
| unfair to poor communities who can't afford it. But they
| have a lot of rich neighbors. Not to mention hotels and the
| like.
|
| It seems like this could be solved by having improvements
| paid for by people who don't mind paying so much and would
| like more water. And in a drought, it means there is more
| supply, as well as people who can cut back on water usage
| without much sacrifice.
| wkyle wrote:
| I'm not sure if this claim really makes sense - if water
| districts are incentivized by income, and if high users really
| have such inelastic water consumption, then wouldn't the water
| district continue to raise the tiered rates at the highest
| level?
|
| Thus, under these assumptions, the current tiered rates should
| accurately reflect the marginal price that the wasteful users
| are willing to pay, and any rise in price would result in a
| decrease in consumption.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Water districts are not able to do so with their tiered
| rates. They aren't necessarily for profit corporations (some
| are), although in many ways they are managed like them. The
| additional revenue allows for the addition of staff, the
| implementation of new programs, it helps cover the cost of
| aging infrastructure. Its not necessarily a bad thing. Tiered
| rates with straight caps might make more sense, but again,
| districts are disinterested from this. They generally need to
| make 'across-the-board' reductions of some set amount (say
| 20%). For a long time, it has not been in their interest to
| reduce the usage of these highest rate paying tiers of users.
| googlryas wrote:
| Well, then keep ramping the rates up for big users and
| start giving smaller users more free water. A lot of people
| will just use the same amount of water even if their bill
| is eliminated.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _The additional revenue allows for the addition of staff,
| the implementation of new programs, it helps cover the cost
| of aging infrastructure._
|
| We could do away with usage tiers, but then we'd have to
| fund the missing utility revenue out of state/local
| budgets.
|
| Although, for states with modern-sized populations,
| managing and funding water infrastructure at the state
| level seems to make more sense.
| amluto wrote:
| What, exactly, is the problem here? Water districts can turn
| money into water, even in a drought. This can be done with
| desalination, sewage reclamation, nonpotable graywater
| distribution, development of new pipelines, etc.
| madelyn wrote:
| Raising tiered rates enough, intuitively, is effectively the
| same as a cap.
|
| Yes, it's absurd to think about charging ex. $50k a gallon for
| gallons over 10k, but that's basically a cap. No one has the
| money.
|
| (But yes, I'd say we should implement caps rather than being
| ridiculous)
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| I don't have the data in front of me, but iirc, its kind-of
| your standard pareto. Around 20% of the users use 80% of the
| water in a district. I mean you say no one has the money, but
| that 20% might be 2-3 oom higher in total use than the median
| of the 80%.
|
| I think there are two or three issues bundled into one here.
| One is that water is managed at the district level. Districts
| are a patchwork of county, city, and private entities, some
| with elected leaderships, some with appointed leadership. The
| state has no direct control over water use in this way,
| although they have significant authority in other ways that
| can very much impact water use. However, that authority is
| split between a set of state agencies that have research and
| policy power, but no regulatory authority, and an elected/
| appointed state water board that is just chasing the next
| election cycle. Finally, at the district level, these
| organizations are just a hot mess. Its a complete clusterfck
| of frankly, shockingly arcane methods for assessing and
| managing water (ever heard the term miners inch?). Half of
| these districts barely know where their water is going. I see
| the whole mess as a failure of neoliberalism, an undue faith
| in markets.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The workaround for this is to have smaller irrigation zones that
| will work with a lower flow rate.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Chile has private, water brokers.
|
| Water goes to the highest bidder
|
| The industry employs hundreds of people.
|
| I bet this would be a disaster for CA farmers, though
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm not so sure it would be a disaster (Societally, sure many
| farmers livelihoods would be disrupted...), would many food
| become unprofitably expensive or a rare luxury, yes. Would many
| farms be immediately incentivized to move to more efficient
| irrigation or even more efficient crops, probably.
|
| Seems like we should subsidize farmers with grants for improved
| water use instead of just giving them cheap endless water.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Chile is also changing their constitution next month to revert
| the privatisation of water. It's that bad of a shitshow.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Let's not forget that California does not permit well drilling in
| most incorporated towns and cities. If homes are allowed to put
| up solar and drill their own wells..they don't have to pay for
| water and power. But that just won't do, would it?
|
| Even in some parts of Sonoma, there is talk that they will not
| allow septic tank installation on lots less than 1.5 acres which
| is really awkward because most lots minimum size is 1 acre. And
| the city doesn't annex all areas in the county effectively
| denying sewer and hence residences.
|
| But none of this surprises me. I am very familiar with the unholy
| corrupt alliances between Big Gov and real estate mafias. Altho I
| have only seen in it developing countries. I guess that's what
| California is now..it is what it is...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Private wells draw from the same aquifer(s) as every other non-
| surface water source. They are public, not private resources.
| jwie wrote:
| Consumer water restrictions are 8th order concerns.
|
| If we had a serious government in the United States they'd be
| talking about our annual export of 4.887e11 gallons of water to
| Mexico from the Colorado River.
|
| That's 1.5 million acre-feet for those more familiar with
| agricultural water units.
|
| There's your weapon against drought. Just, don't export hundreds
| of trillions of gallons of water.
|
| Also alfalfa exports to China are, in essence, water exports on
| the same magnitude. But that might be harmful to politically
| connected California farmers.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The solution is to prevent the river from flowing to Mexico?
| Sounds like a dick move similar to what China does with the
| Mekong.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Mexico's water rights from the Colorado are
| protected by treaty. Sure, we could break the treaty - just
| like the state of Colorado could decide to keep all of their
| snow melt to themselves.
|
| But it's probably better to acknowledge that our actions (like
| building a dam and diverting a river for local use) can
| severely affect other people. Or to reduce frivolous water use
| in a desert.
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