4 ms·
Eight bucks just for the water to draw a bath? No thanks. Residential and city use is a) a drop in the proverbial bucket (20% of California water use) and b) c
by samatman 5y ago
Eight bucks just for the water to draw a bath? No thanks.
Residential and city use is a) a drop in the proverbial bucket (20% of California water use) and b) comes from a completely different system. For the most part it's drawn from snowmelt in the Sierras, and even when drought gets pretty bad it's been sustainable. Fingers crossed it will stay that way.
Really it's farmers who should pay for water, and hard limits on aquifer withdrawal. They'll hate it but there's not enough to go around and I don't see an alternative.
Also worth pointing out that California is an enormous place and what applies to the Central and Imperial Valleys doesn't apply to, say, the San Joaquin Delta. There's no good reason to stop growing rice in the latter, because the acre-feet of water which go into doing so are just going to flow directly into the Bay otherwise.
Maybe we could pay for more of it to be diverted into the Central Valley if there was some sort of profit in it. Water auctions, say.
- inetknght 5y ago> Eight bucks just for the water to draw a bath? No thanks. That's the cost of living in a desert.
- whoknowswhat11 5y agoIt’s a made up number - no one normal uses this much water in a bath
- admax88q 5y agoThey pretty clearly confused 0.25 cents with $0.25
- samatman 5y agoYep that's what happened. In my defense, it's common "greengrocerese" to list a price that way. If limes are shown as "0.10¢ ea." on a handwritten card, you're not getting ten for a penny. I still think taxing residential water is irrelevant, and that the difference between buying water at auction from the state and paying a tax for that water to the state, is that auction is better because price discovery tends to be.
- whoknowswhat11 5y agoThe idea here is to set what appears to be a ridiculously low tax that applies to everyone. No carvouts so reduces arguments about fairness. This highlight the large water uses (usually free in the millions of gallons). If you aren't willing to say a gallon of water is worth a quarter of a penny - then we can usually stop talking about any supposed shortages. Retail / urban water use (ie, a bottle of water at the store, often 1/8th of a gallon - this tax is irrelevant obviously) already is wildly higher in cost than the "free" groundwater and river water folks are using.
- whoknowswhat11 5y agoIf you use 3,200 per bath you should be in jail. That is seriously a ridiculous waste of water per bath. That’s years worth of baths for most people - average cost per bath at 0.25 cents per gallon would be 7 cents. Realize farmers use water measured in ACRE feet
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nightfly 5y agoThey misread 0.25 cents as $0.25 or 25¢
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoAn unfortunate reality is that a lot of signage also makes this mistake and advertises things like "0.25 cents per gallon" with the intent to mean 25¢/gallon. The poster's confusion is understandable.
- bbarnett 5y agohttps://consumerist.com/2010/02/23/verizon-didnt-know-difference-between-difference-between-002-and-00002/ https://consumerist.com/2010/02/23/verizon-didnt-know-differ...
- whoknowswhat11 5y agoAhh - that helps