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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

#31

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

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.

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.

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

#32

Post by wkyle »

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.

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.

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

#33

Post by z3c0 »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #23
z3c0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#34

Post by sillystuff »

jeffbee wrote: post #19
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.

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.

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

#35

Post by bombcar »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #30
CitrusFruits wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the problem hasn’t gotten bad enough. Once it does something will occur.

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

#36

Post by whitepirate20 »

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.

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

#37

Post by googlryas »

whitepirate20 wrote: post #36

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 r…

Hopefully you don't have a flow restrictor on your heart!

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

#38

Post by CharlesW »

mackmgg wrote: post #24
oceanplexian wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly, thank you.

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

#39

Post by sillystuff »

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.

> 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

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

#40

Post by newaccount2021 »

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…

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