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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

#291

Post by colinmhayes »

sys_64738 wrote: post #50
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.

If you've more money then sense then this doesn't work. Restrictors sounds like a win/win for everybody.

The point isn't to stop people from using water. Its to get them to pay for the infrastructure required to increase the water supply so there's enough for everyone.

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

#293

Post by colinmhayes »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #20
nathanaldensr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suffi…

Welfare != surplus. Maximizing surplus is rarely the optimal thing to do.

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

#294

Post by zbrozek »

Bud wrote: post #101
amluto wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not? Our electric utilities complain about nonuniform load. Isn't a desalination plant an excellent variable load given that its product would get dumped into reservoirs? You could totally flatten the duck curve if you wanted.

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

#295

Post by lazide »

specialist wrote: post #243
lazide wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use different water systems. There is no single ‘water system’ or water source in the state. A senior rights holder has rights on a specific source of water . Water itself is ‘free’ until there is no more - minus the infrastructure costs to get it where you want of course, which can be zero to insanely expensive depending on the source of water. City dwellers are paying for the infrastructure to get clean, drink…

IANAL, so don't know the right words, but water in my jurisdiction has something like opportunity costs. Any water not used for agriculture or humans is available for fisheries, power generation, and habitat.

FYI, most hydropower and flood control dams have minimum flows they must sustain to avoid overtopping during spring flood seasons, and a maximum height they are allowed to store water at because of it. It's called the Exclusive Flood Control Storage Capacity.

If they can use that for power generation, it's 'free power' - they'd literally have to put it through the spillway instead of the turbines instead. That water also ends up in whatever farming areas can use it during that time too.

The issue of course is that weather is unpredictable, and if there ISN'T a flood, that was storage that could have been used for water for later. Either power, or crops, or drinking, etc.

What you're referring to I believe is prioritization of water - humans get x percent up to a certain cap, then the rest is fish and wildlife, or on demand power, etc.

That is what folks in the thread are generally referring to as 'water rights'.

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

#296

Post by jdkee »

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

That is why the market should be used as an efficient distribution mechanism.

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

#297

Post by hedora »

karaterobot wrote: post #91
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

That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime thin…

The summer after they passed the plastic bag ban, I worked near the SF bay. Nearly every day, I'd watch a garbage scow go out full, and come back empty.

I often wonder if those scows are still operating. I'd guess one load put as much plastic in the bay as a year of litter.

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

#298

Post by darkteflon »

hedora wrote: post #297
karaterobot wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime thin…

The summer after they passed the plastic bag ban, I worked near the SF bay. Nearly every day, I'd watch a garbage scow go out full, and come back empty. I often wonder if those scows are still operating. I'd guess one load put as much plastic in the bay as a year of litter.

You’re saying the city is dumping plastic in the bay? I may be misunderstanding your comment.

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

#299

Post by colechristensen »

Siddarth1977 wrote: post #259
wudangmonk wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they have ever added one of these useless restrictions on California yet it's been mostly posturing. They blame the lawn, and you have people peacocking about their dry lawns in an effort to gain social brownie points. I'm surprised they still blame the lawn and havent moved on to pools or something more easily associated with wealth to really try and stir the poor vs rich debate. Meanwhile even if no g…

Agricultural use of water is actually productive though. Most of us prefer having food to starving. Having a lush, green front lawn in the desert however helps no one (and actively harms the natural plants and animals that belong in a given climate). Additionally, while some water issues are over very large areas (eg, piping water from Colorado River to LA) lots of places have far more local water issues, where a giv…

Nobody is going to starve if California stops agriculture growing the wrong plants in arid climates. There are plenty of places to grow things that don’t require abusive amounts of irrigation (and many that require zero irrigation at all)

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

#300

Post by jdkee »

claaams wrote: post #267
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

Can we also restrict golf courses too please?

Why? Let them pay market rates for water.
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