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The thing to remember is that California doesn't have a state-wide drought crisis, it has hundreds of district-wide crises, which vary in degrees of severity. A

by curun1r 11y ago

The thing to remember is that California doesn't have a state-wide drought crisis, it has hundreds of district-wide crises, which vary in degrees of severity. And each district operates independently of the others. This isn't just an administrative arrangement...they're managing different stores of water from different watersheds and it's not possible to "re-balance" water from one district to another without serious engineering work like the aqueduct systems that move water from the northern part of the state to the south. This doesn't make it right for some people to ignore the fact we're in a drought and use that much water. But it also doesn't mean that it's some sort of class issue where rich people are getting away with using obscene quantities of water and poor people are getting fined because of some inherent bias towards those rich people. The people getting fined are living in the desert and their district is not meeting its conservation quotas, therefore fines. The district where the water hogs live is meeting its quotas, thanks to others who've conserved, so it's not handing out fines. It's two separate districts with two separate policies which both have reasonable explanations. Perhaps there should be a statewide fine for anyone using more than, say, 500 gal per person per day, as a measure of solidarity with those who are being asked to conserve more. That would be reasonable, but it hasn't happened yet. And until it does, you can't really compare across water districts because they're all in different situations.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Bel Air's water source is located such that it could supply water to the entire Los Angeles area. Yes, getting it over to Apple Valley would be a bit of a stretch, but you are seriously suggesting that 30k gallons/day in Los Angeles (also desert; contrary to your implication) is OK if you are sitting right next to a reservoir? California water districts aren't too forthcoming on information about exact sources of water; Bell Air's reservoir seems to be in the process of decommissioning and Wikipedia claims it is bypassed by a direct link to the LA aqueduct. The source for the LA aqueducts are much further away from LA than Apple Valley is. It might make more sense for everyone to get a daily ration of water. More water than the ration may be used, but you'd need to pay for it, and anyone who used less than their ration should receive a rebate from those who used more than their share.
- curun1r 11y ago
  > but you are seriously suggesting that 30k gallons/day in Los Angeles (also desert; contrary to your implication) is OK if you are sitting right next to a reservoir? I specifically said it doesn't make it right for some people to ignore the drought and use that much water. But the point was that the district was meeting its conservation quotas, so it wasn't issuing fines. It's not some conspiracy to let Bel Air residents use more water because they're rich. It just makes sense that if the drought conditions are not as severe for a certain district, it would react differently to people who use too much water. As I also laid out, I do think there should be some state-wide solidarity fine even in places with access to more water. The money collected could go towards some of the billions the state wants to spend on drought preparedness (there was a ballot initiative last year). > It might make more sense for everyone to get a daily ration of water. It might make sense for everyone in a district to get their daily ration of water (averaged over the course of the month), but it doesn't make sense to set a global ration when certain districts need to set lower per-capita usage than others.

by curun1r 11y ago

jsprogrammer 11y ago

Bel Air's water source is located such that it could supply water to the entire Los Angeles area. Yes, getting it over to Apple Valley would be a bit of a stretch, but you are seriously suggesting that 30k gallons/day in Los Angeles (also desert; contrary to your implication) is OK if you are sitting right next to a reservoir? California water districts aren't too forthcoming on information about exact sources of water; Bell Air's reservoir seems to be in the process of decommissioning and Wikipedia claims it is bypassed by a direct link to the LA aqueduct. The source for the LA aqueducts are much further away from LA than Apple Valley is. It might make more sense for everyone to get a daily ration of water. More water than the ration may be used, but you'd need to pay for it, and anyone who used less than their ration should receive a rebate from those who used more than their share.

curun1r 11y ago
> but you are seriously suggesting that 30k gallons/day in Los Angeles (also desert; contrary to your implication) is OK if you are sitting right next to a reservoir? I specifically said it doesn't make it right for some people to ignore the drought and use that much water. But the point was that the district was meeting its conservation quotas, so it wasn't issuing fines. It's not some conspiracy to let Bel Air residents use more water because they're rich. It just makes sense that if the drought conditions are not as severe for a certain district, it would react differently to people who use too much water. As I also laid out, I do think there should be some state-wide solidarity fine even in places with access to more water. The money collected could go towards some of the billions the state wants to spend on drought preparedness (there was a ballot initiative last year). > It might make more sense for everyone to get a daily ration of water. It might make sense for everyone in a district to get their daily ration of water (averaged over the course of the month), but it doesn't make sense to set a global ration when certain districts need to set lower per-capita usage than others.