I wonder what it will take for people to start leaving the state. And it's going to be the wealthy who leave first.
This goes against all available evidence. The rich are the only group who are still on balance migrating into California.
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
#22I 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.
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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.
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 mo…
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.
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#25Earlier 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.
>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).
So... let them use up the water so that it's affordable to stop them from using up the water?
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#26The 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…
> But the rich always figure out a way around everything. They always do.
Buy water from their neighbours to hop on their quotas?
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#27In 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
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.
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#28Earlier 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.
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.
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#29I 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 si…
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)
Re: The fight against drought in California has a new tool: The restrictor
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ta…
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.