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Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't. Instead of pointing fingers at each

Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't. Instead of pointing fingers at each other, the best way is to price it accordingly. The root problem is that this is not the case and it's too cheap. And it's only cheap because it comes from non renewable sources that are getting scarcer. Everybody feels entitled to the cheap water and then ends up wasting it because it is so cheap. More expensive water leads to people taking better care of what they do with it. E.g. watering a lawn because you like it to be green should not be close to free. Especially not in what is essentially a desert (which large parts of California effectively are). That's an epic waste of water. You should have the freedom to buy that water at a fair price and waste it as you please. But it should cost you. Lawns should be an expensive hobby. Same with toilets. There's no need to flush five gallons every time you use the toilet. Less wasteful toilets exist. And of course, farmers can learn a thing or two about farming more sustainably. But why would they when that does not save them any money? There is no shortage of water. California borders on the largest reservoir of it on the planet (the pacific). All it needs is a little bit of desalination. Lots of other countries do this at scale; typically because it is preferable to not having clean water. This takes energy and money but it can be done sustainably. If water was priced correctly, more water would be desalinated. Instead, aquifers are drained, former lakes are turned into salt lakes, etc.

QuarterReptile 4y ago
>All it needs is a little bit of desalination. And that brings us to the other biggest market problem that California has unsolved by collective action: energy markets. Highways would be up there, too.
timst4 4y ago
Yes, this is a big factor. Water is too cheap - similar to carbon. Both need to be priced higher soon or we’re toast.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  Since when has raising the price of anything changed anyone’s behavior? Oh you mean change the behavior of the poor, not the rich. Gotcha.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Obviously there are progressive ways to do it. You make it tiered such that the the typical household never leaves the lowest pricing tier. Golf courses, cattle ranchers and almond farmers on the other hand....
    - tzs 4y ago
      So you don't raise the price of water for typical households, which is only a small percentage of their budget, and instead raise the price of food, which is generally a much larger percentage of their budget?
      - gruez 4y ago
        1. you're trying to imply that because food budget is greater than water budget, that raising water prices on farmers will affect households more. This does not make any sense. Only a fraction of the price of food paid by a household is attributable to the price of water, so you can't really conclude that just because households spend more money on food than on water, that increasing water prices on farmers will cost them more. 2. even if that were the case, it's a necessary evil to incentivize lower water use crops. Suppose there were only two types of food, apples and oranges. They both cost around the same right now, but oranges require 10x more water. Raising water prices will raise orange prices, but that's arguably a good thing because it forces consumers to choose more water efficient foods. I don't see how the alternative (ie. continue subsidizing oranges even though they're more costly to society) is any better. Not to mention, you can redistribute the excess earnings back to citizens to make this revenue neutral.
      - labcomputer 4y ago
        Oh noes! All the people for whom almond consumption represents a significant amount of their daily calories will have to switch to some pedestrian food! Quelle horror!
BurningFrog 4y ago
Your on the right track. Pricing is the solution (and cause) for most scarce resource problems. But in California, household consumption is very far from the main water problem. Agriculture is a far bigger problem, and the pricing regime there is often completely insane. There are other problem sectors.
thaumaturgy 4y ago
This seems to be a carefully-considered market-based solution to a complex problem, but there are a few details I'm struggling with. Significantly increasing the price of a natural resource would have severe impacts on impoverished communities while having no effect at all on wealthy people and companies; is this intentional? Around 45% of households in California are rentals. Renters are often restricted by their rental contracts in what they can and cannot do with a yard (if they are wealthy enough to have one). Should renters be stuck with extremely high water bills when their landlords require a green lawn? Or should landlords not be able to require certain landscape features? And the toilets, should the renters living paycheck-to-paycheck be the ones replacing these units? ...actually, I'll retract that question, it's a silly one. On further consideration, I realize that if the cost of water exceeds the cost of replacing a toilet, then people working for minimum wage will be properly motivated to find some way to replace their landlord's fixtures with newer models. Your examples are mostly focused on residential water usage, which has been about 10% of the state's overall water usage, and has been steadily decreasing for years. I noticed that you explicitly didn't want to point any fingers, but can you think of any examples that might not be residential? Something more specific, perhaps, than "more sustainable farming". As I'm sure you're already aware, water rights are an extremely sore point of political contention between farmers and the state, and one of the major drivers of conservative and "State of Jefferson" separatist politics up and down the entire I-5 corridor. Can you estimate, in dollars, the upper limit for the cost of agricultural water before someone starts shooting lawmakers at the capital? You mentioned desalination. This solution works so well in Israel, I don't understand why it wouldn't work for all of California too. The Carlsbad desalination plant was completed and became operational just a few years ago. It only cost one billion dollars to build, an additional $50 million per year to operate, and will be able to provide about 7% of San Diego county's water needs. Do these numbers feel like they're making water expensive enough? California is mountainous, with a large central valley separated from the coast by a range of mountains that is in some places taller than the tallest mountain in Israel. Do you think it would be better to build massive pipelines over these mountains and pump water uphill from the coast into the central valley, or would it be better to tunnel through the mountains and pump the water that way? I wouldn't worry too much about the cost either way, since more expensive water is better. Oh, speaking of cost: when there's a rainy year, should Californians be forced to continue buying water from desalination plants, or should the desalination plants be shut down and then restarted the next year?
rmah 4y ago
Um, but the water in California is cheap and plentiful. Sustainably sourced, I don't know. But the root of the problem is that farmers do not pay a "fair" price, they get steep steep discounts. All the lawn watering, all the toilet flushes, all the swimming pools, etc. all amount to around 10% of water use in California. And those people already pay, on average, many multiples of what farmers pay per gallon.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  Exactly so. Water is cheap, plentiful and available in nearly limitless quantities in the amounts used for urban living. The only scarcity centers around the far larger amounts of water used by agricultural industry -- which are in large part not growing food needed for sustenance. Much of what we grow is exported, and could more easily be grown elsewhere. For example, Saudi Arabia has been expanding hay and alfalfa farms in California because they wish to reduce the depletion of the Saudi aquifers. California water policy simply allows this to happen, at the expense of our own aquifers. Domestic water curtailment programs are a fraud. The only issue is industrial allocations of farm water. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...
- kolanos 4y ago
  This might just be me, but I prioritize agriculture over swimming pools. It's strange that it is agriculture to blame when LA doesn't source its own water and instead diverts water from the central valleys away from agriculture. Agriculture doesn't "pay their fair share", yet LA is actively taking water away from agriculture and also draining 5-7 year reservoirs. When wild fires are in full swing we're going to really regret not having those reservoirs. [0] Most farms have had their water share cut to zero already. [1] People would rather waste water on LA lawns and swimming pools (or dump it in the Pacific, which is what happens to most of it that reaches LA [2]) rather than produce food with it. This is just baffling to me. [0]: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to-top-in-2019-being-drained-by-state/ https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-california-farmers-us-government-drought-water https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [2]: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet-winter-california-20190220-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...
synaesthesisx 4y ago
> Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't. We literally live next to an ocean - water can be cheap, plentiful and sourced sustainably via desalination. Desalination has generally been prohibitively expensive, however that doesn't need to be the case, considering humans have already figured out how to generate clean energy.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  Activists will do anything they can to block progress. Surfrider and other orgs blocked San Luis Obispo County from putting a pipeline in between the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant desal facility and a deep well in Nipomo — the idea was to replenish the groundwater to prevent seawater incursion. The grown-up Jeff Spicolis went "no way, dude" and screwed everyone. If the seawater continues to infiltrate we'll lose valuable ag real estate, but that hardly matters to them. See also: Chumash and their undersea "heritage sites" (which are often artifacts that fell out of capsized fishing boats, not actually places where people lived). The Chumash literally teamed up with commercial fishermen to stop a renewable energy project offshore of Vandenberg. Madness.
gpapilion 4y ago
I would venture most toilets in California are 1.6 gallons per flush or less. In 2014 it moved to 1.28 gpf. The replacement cycle has probably caught the majority, but you never know. Drought tolerant landscaping took off in the 1990s, and you still see plenty of it. Lawns represent a real issue, but municipalities still force users to water at night, sometimes particular days to reduce usage. The real issue is agriculture usage and high usage crops(almonds and alfalfa) which are often exported. These users get absurd discounts compared to residential usage (in the 90s there was moaning when prices went to 32 dollars an acre foot, or 325k gallons currently it’s ~$70).

QuarterReptile 4y ago

>All it needs is a little bit of desalination. And that brings us to the other biggest market problem that California has unsolved by collective action: energy markets. Highways would be up there, too.

timst4 4y ago

Yes, this is a big factor. Water is too cheap - similar to carbon. Both need to be priced higher soon or we’re toast.

FollowingTheDao 4y ago
Since when has raising the price of anything changed anyone’s behavior? Oh you mean change the behavior of the poor, not the rich. Gotcha.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Obviously there are progressive ways to do it. You make it tiered such that the the typical household never leaves the lowest pricing tier. Golf courses, cattle ranchers and almond farmers on the other hand....
  - tzs 4y ago
    So you don't raise the price of water for typical households, which is only a small percentage of their budget, and instead raise the price of food, which is generally a much larger percentage of their budget?
    - gruez 4y ago
      1. you're trying to imply that because food budget is greater than water budget, that raising water prices on farmers will affect households more. This does not make any sense. Only a fraction of the price of food paid by a household is attributable to the price of water, so you can't really conclude that just because households spend more money on food than on water, that increasing water prices on farmers will cost them more. 2. even if that were the case, it's a necessary evil to incentivize lower water use crops. Suppose there were only two types of food, apples and oranges. They both cost around the same right now, but oranges require 10x more water. Raising water prices will raise orange prices, but that's arguably a good thing because it forces consumers to choose more water efficient foods. I don't see how the alternative (ie. continue subsidizing oranges even though they're more costly to society) is any better. Not to mention, you can redistribute the excess earnings back to citizens to make this revenue neutral.
    - labcomputer 4y ago
      Oh noes! All the people for whom almond consumption represents a significant amount of their daily calories will have to switch to some pedestrian food! Quelle horror!

BurningFrog 4y ago

Your on the right track. Pricing is the solution (and cause) for most scarce resource problems. But in California, household consumption is very far from the main water problem. Agriculture is a far bigger problem, and the pricing regime there is often completely insane. There are other problem sectors.

thaumaturgy 4y ago

This seems to be a carefully-considered market-based solution to a complex problem, but there are a few details I'm struggling with. Significantly increasing the price of a natural resource would have severe impacts on impoverished communities while having no effect at all on wealthy people and companies; is this intentional? Around 45% of households in California are rentals. Renters are often restricted by their rental contracts in what they can and cannot do with a yard (if they are wealthy enough to have one). Should renters be stuck with extremely high water bills when their landlords require a green lawn? Or should landlords not be able to require certain landscape features? And the toilets, should the renters living paycheck-to-paycheck be the ones replacing these units? ...actually, I'll retract that question, it's a silly one. On further consideration, I realize that if the cost of water exceeds the cost of replacing a toilet, then people working for minimum wage will be properly motivated to find some way to replace their landlord's fixtures with newer models. Your examples are mostly focused on residential water usage, which has been about 10% of the state's overall water usage, and has been steadily decreasing for years. I noticed that you explicitly didn't want to point any fingers, but can you think of any examples that might not be residential? Something more specific, perhaps, than "more sustainable farming". As I'm sure you're already aware, water rights are an extremely sore point of political contention between farmers and the state, and one of the major drivers of conservative and "State of Jefferson" separatist politics up and down the entire I-5 corridor. Can you estimate, in dollars, the upper limit for the cost of agricultural water before someone starts shooting lawmakers at the capital? You mentioned desalination. This solution works so well in Israel, I don't understand why it wouldn't work for all of California too. The Carlsbad desalination plant was completed and became operational just a few years ago. It only cost one billion dollars to build, an additional $50 million per year to operate, and will be able to provide about 7% of San Diego county's water needs. Do these numbers feel like they're making water expensive enough? California is mountainous, with a large central valley separated from the coast by a range of mountains that is in some places taller than the tallest mountain in Israel. Do you think it would be better to build massive pipelines over these mountains and pump water uphill from the coast into the central valley, or would it be better to tunnel through the mountains and pump the water that way? I wouldn't worry too much about the cost either way, since more expensive water is better. Oh, speaking of cost: when there's a rainy year, should Californians be forced to continue buying water from desalination plants, or should the desalination plants be shut down and then restarted the next year?

rmah 4y ago

Um, but the water in California is cheap and plentiful. Sustainably sourced, I don't know. But the root of the problem is that farmers do not pay a "fair" price, they get steep steep discounts. All the lawn watering, all the toilet flushes, all the swimming pools, etc. all amount to around 10% of water use in California. And those people already pay, on average, many multiples of what farmers pay per gallon.

throwaway09223 4y ago
Exactly so. Water is cheap, plentiful and available in nearly limitless quantities in the amounts used for urban living. The only scarcity centers around the far larger amounts of water used by agricultural industry -- which are in large part not growing food needed for sustenance. Much of what we grow is exported, and could more easily be grown elsewhere. For example, Saudi Arabia has been expanding hay and alfalfa farms in California because they wish to reduce the depletion of the Saudi aquifers. California water policy simply allows this to happen, at the expense of our own aquifers. Domestic water curtailment programs are a fraud. The only issue is industrial allocations of farm water. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-water-drought-scarce-saudi-arabia https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...
kolanos 4y ago
This might just be me, but I prioritize agriculture over swimming pools. It's strange that it is agriculture to blame when LA doesn't source its own water and instead diverts water from the central valleys away from agriculture. Agriculture doesn't "pay their fair share", yet LA is actively taking water away from agriculture and also draining 5-7 year reservoirs. When wild fires are in full swing we're going to really regret not having those reservoirs. [0] Most farms have had their water share cut to zero already. [1] People would rather waste water on LA lawns and swimming pools (or dump it in the Pacific, which is what happens to most of it that reaches LA [2]) rather than produce food with it. This is just baffling to me. [0]: https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to-top-in-2019-being-drained-by-state/ https://californiaglobe.com/articles/ca-reservoirs-filled-to... [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-california-farmers-us-government-drought-water https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/23/rain-califor... [2]: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet-winter-california-20190220-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-rainwater-lost-wet...

synaesthesisx 4y ago

> Either way, Californians should stop pretending water is cheap, plentiful or sourced in a sustainable way. It simply isn't. We literally live next to an ocean - water can be cheap, plentiful and sourced sustainably via desalination. Desalination has generally been prohibitively expensive, however that doesn't need to be the case, considering humans have already figured out how to generate clean energy.

aerostable_slug 4y ago
Activists will do anything they can to block progress. Surfrider and other orgs blocked San Luis Obispo County from putting a pipeline in between the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant desal facility and a deep well in Nipomo — the idea was to replenish the groundwater to prevent seawater incursion. The grown-up Jeff Spicolis went "no way, dude" and screwed everyone. If the seawater continues to infiltrate we'll lose valuable ag real estate, but that hardly matters to them. See also: Chumash and their undersea "heritage sites" (which are often artifacts that fell out of capsized fishing boats, not actually places where people lived). The Chumash literally teamed up with commercial fishermen to stop a renewable energy project offshore of Vandenberg. Madness.

gpapilion 4y ago

I would venture most toilets in California are 1.6 gallons per flush or less. In 2014 it moved to 1.28 gpf. The replacement cycle has probably caught the majority, but you never know. Drought tolerant landscaping took off in the 1990s, and you still see plenty of it. Lawns represent a real issue, but municipalities still force users to water at night, sometimes particular days to reduce usage. The real issue is agriculture usage and high usage crops(almonds and alfalfa) which are often exported. These users get absurd discounts compared to residential usage (in the 90s there was moaning when prices went to 32 dollars an acre foot, or 325k gallons currently it’s ~$70).