[HN Gopher] Use It or Lose It: Exercising one's right to waste w...
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Use It or Lose It: Exercising one's right to waste water (2015)
Author : EndXA
Score : 22 points
Date : 2023-12-03 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (projects.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (projects.propublica.org)
| RecycledEle wrote:
| If government on the US takes away water rights, and thereby
| decreases the value of land, the 5th Amendment requires
| compensation to the land owners.
| grecy wrote:
| In the coming decades when clean drinking water runs out they
| won't have to take it away.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Could this be abused to reinterpret the Takings Clause as a
| right to water access? If only to give the finger to Nestle.
| amluto wrote:
| I don't know what the Supreme Court thinks, but I'm not
| convinced.
|
| If the government takes away your land or your building or your
| gold, that's eminent domain. But these water rights are
| permission to take water in the future that may or may not ever
| show up (and increasingly does not show up), and they may de
| facto not be usable regardless of any government action.
|
| Alternatively, don't take them away -- just tax them. Set a
| price for water such that there is no scarcity (keeping in mind
| that the money collected can be used to reclaim, desalinate or
| otherwise acquire more water), and let anyone else buy water at
| the same price, and _poof_ they're still there but no longer
| worth much.
| raldi wrote:
| It's not so straightforward. If the government zones your land
| to forbid something, the Supreme Court long ago concluded they
| don't owe you anything.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If the value of my house falls because there is no longer bus
| service, can I claim compensation? Why do you think my 'bus
| rights' are any less real than these fictitious 'water rights'
|
| When there is air pollution affecting price of my property, or
| someone built something to spoil the view, should I claim
| compensation too?
| sudobash1 wrote:
| These sorts of perverse incentives are sadly common in financial
| situations. You never want to spend less than your full budget
| lest your budget be reduced next year.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Exactly, at a previous job I suggested that if someone spent
| less than their budget the surplus should be added to their
| budget for the next fiscal year, then managers could plan for
| big changes, go lean for a couple of years and then have make
| the changes needed while staying "in budget." I saw an
| accountant literally roll their eyes at this idea. They
| explained that any surplus at the end of the year goes into
| executive bonuses so either use my full budget or give the boss
| some extra spending cash next year, my choice. Uh yeah, right.
| esafak wrote:
| I wonder what the right way to incentivize it is.
|
| edit: I meant corporate budgets but thanks for shedding light
| on the original question.
| konschubert wrote:
| You price the externality correctly ( here, it would be a
| higher price on water. )
|
| Then, if you want, you can provide a subsidy in terms of cash
| payments. That subsidy must not depend on the actual
| consumption of water.
|
| This way, the marginal cost of the resource is correctly
| priced.
|
| See also LVT, CO2 pricing,...
| mindslight wrote:
| Since we seem to just be stuck suffering this regime of "water
| rights" as imaginary property... If these are true legal property
| interests can they not just be sold/rented to other users? Even
| if the arrangement needed to remain contingent upon that amount
| water actually reaching a different user downstream to consider
| it being used, that would seem much better than the current
| approach of squandering it.
|
| Then we could at least apply market economics to the situation as
| the flow of water decreases. Just consider it a strategic sunk
| cost that Saudi Arabia or whomever has obtained a financial
| entitlement to most of the Colorado River (Saint Coase would be
| proud), and then move forward from there. I'd hate to see the
| imaginary property regime get any more entrenched, but it would
| seem better than the current impasse.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Reminds me of TDRs in New York City. You can sell unused
| density in one zone to someone else in another zone. Of course,
| this system is just piling bullshit on top of bullshit to
| negate it, but it at least lets reform happen without people
| making pesky Takings Clause lawsuits.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| There is an episode of South Park that covers this exact
| scenario, "The Streaming Wars"
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Tragedy of the anticommons" _usually_ refers to the tragedy of
| enclosing something that isn 't scarce (e.g. copyrighted creative
| work), but this is a slightly different tragedy that deserves the
| same name. One where we enclosed something that _is_ scarce, and
| did so in a way that encourages the overuse of that scarce good.
| uoaei wrote:
| If the water runs off into streams and rivers and on into the
| ocean, then it can be said to be "wasted", but if it soaks back
| into the ground and rejoins the groundwater, it is still
| available in the aquifers. This is the premise of the vast
| majority of groundwater recharge projects. The trick is to know
| how quickly that water infiltrates given soil composition and
| local geology. Evaporation is not a concern if the water
| infiltrates quickly. It's barely a concern as it is unless your
| surface-area-to-volume ratio is relatively high (i.e. wide
| shallow pools), which is why on-surface reservoirs are as popular
| as they are. (And anyway, local humidity is slightly elevated
| surrounding bodies of water so the partial pressure of the
| atmospheric water is already pretty high and evaporation happens
| slower.)
|
| The real cause of groundwater aquifer depletion is a law of
| conservation. That when the water goes into plants and animals
| and then those products are shipped away, there's nothing
| bringing the water back into the parched lands except for the
| rather slow and increasingly unpredictable patterns of the water
| cycle. California's Central Valley is facing this issue. The
| snowpack from last year made it abundantly clear how important it
| is to recharge groundwater using what's pouring off the
| mountains, rather than letting it flow to the ocean. Use it or
| lose it, indeed.
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