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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

#101

Post by Bud »

amluto wrote: post #82
TheRealPomax wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resou…

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.

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.

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

#102

Post by manholio »

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."

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.

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

#103

Post by Bud »

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.

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.

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

#104

Post by baragiola »

manholio wrote: post #97
baragiola wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Degrowth is a loser mindset. Why not focus on getting more water, i.e. from the sea as done in Israel?

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.

California is extremely rich. You have a water shortage. Water is important

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

#105

Post by jeffbee »

georgeburdell wrote: post #92
jeffbee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes against all available evidence. The rich are the only group who are still on balance migrating into California.

Do you have a source? I think your statement is only true of domestic migration https://lao.ca.gov/laoecontax/article/detail/265

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...

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

#106

Post by skybrian »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #22

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 si…

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.

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

#107

Post by kortilla »

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.

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

#108

Post by avalys »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #85
lostdog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Isn't the point of tiered rates so that the customer reduces their water usage?

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 p…

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.

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

#109

Post by avalys »

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.

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%?

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

#110

Post by kortilla »

b112 wrote: post #86
nradov wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 val…

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 lea…

> 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.

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