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Solution to problem: Raise water rates. Why is this so hard? Might force people out of the state, but clearly there are too many given the present resources.
by sadris 12y ago
Solution to problem: Raise water rates. Why is this so hard? Might force people out of the state, but clearly there are too many given the present resources.
- mempko 12y agoThis is a subtle way of saying that there are too many undesirable people. Because clearly raising the rate would only drive away people who could not afford them. The yuppie dream maybe...
- Alex3917 12y agoRaising the water rates would punish the people using millions of gallons of water for agriculture and industry. It would have essentially zero effect on the people using it for personal use, even the very poor.
- 7007 12y agoI've seen similar plans for electricity. The more you use the higher the price goes. For an average persons use the price would be the same (or even lower than previous depending on the scale).
- icehawk219 12y agoIf it's raised for everyone one that's just not true. For the very poor even a small increase in their bills could have huge implications that you and I just can't appreciate. And they're the ones who can't necessarily just pack up and leave because they don't have the resources to. Raising the rates for the right parties is what we should really be talking about but the question then is, who? Small farms and industry would be hit very hard but the ones with deep pockets likely wouldn't blink and they're the biggest problem. In my opinion it would need to be a sliding scale. Not just a "$x for n gallons" pricing structure but the more you use the greater the cost per gallon. That would hit the biggest users the hardest while leaving the average person unaffected (unless for some reason they're using absurd amounts in which case they need to be affected).
- drewcrawford 12y agoWe have a system like what you describe here, but for electricity. The "problem" is that the large users go off the grid (via solar, etc). Well, that is not a problem. The problem is that this introduces variability into the grid. That variability is expensive to smooth over, with the result that it can actually be more expensive as a fully loaded cost to supplement your power with solar than getting it from the grid, due to the equipment needed to manage the sun's mood swings. The result of all this is it is really hard to get the incentives right for pricing electricity. I suspect the same is true for water; it is hard to store, there are demand spikes, and there are things like private wells that have weird effects on the water available to everyone else.
- jrs235 12y agoEasy solution, don't allow people to connect/add power to the grid. Want solar panels? Great! Use your panel power or lose it (or store on your own batteries but no hooking up to the grid and selling it to others). Or, if you want to hook up to the grid because you don't want to waste that energy then give it freely to the transmission company who has overhead managing the lines and smoothing out the power loads.
- danepowell 12y agoDetroit tried something similar (albeit for different reasons). Didn't work out so well for them: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/08/08/338068996/episode-559-detroits-water-bill http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/08/08/338068996/episode-...
- sadris 12y agoDetroit should have immediately cut off non-paying customers for... non-payment -- instead of waiting for $90m in overdrafts to accrue.
- DanBC 12y agoAccess to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right so cutting off people who don't pay is problematic. Cutting off farmers is politically scary.