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The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

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Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#11

Post by z3c0 »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #10
z3c0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#12

Post by theshrike79 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #9

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

Chile is also changing their constitution next month to revert the privatisation of water. It's that bad of a shitshow.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#13

Post by lostgame »

avalys wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#14

Post by oceanplexian »

CharlesW wrote: post #7
ars wrote: post #2

I wonder what it will take for people to start leaving the state. And it's going to be the wealthy who leave first.

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 mo…

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.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#15

Post by nathanaldensr »

lostgame wrote: post #13
avalys wrote: post #4

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.

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…

Correct. Increasing the price actually pushes toward guaranteeing that water is only for wealthy people or companies and therefore not for the poor.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#16

Post by CitrusFruits »

twblalock wrote: post #5
hadlock wrote: post #3

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

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.

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.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#17

Post by NelsonMinar »

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).

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#18

Post by gruez »

z3c0 wrote: post #8
avalys wrote: post #4

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.

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.

>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).

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#19

Post by jeffbee »

avalys wrote: post #4

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.

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 17¢/gallon. You can use as much as 650 gallons per day without hitting this rate. The basic rate is 3¢/gallon.

Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor

#20

Post by lotsofpulp »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #15
lostgame wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Correct. Increasing the price actually pushes toward guaranteeing that water is only for wealthy people or companies and therefore not for the poor.

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.

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