8 ms·

The risks of cheap water

55 points by whyenot 12y ago

JoachimS 12y ago
At the same time the right to water has been protected by UN as a basic human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water For this reason what happens when the price for water is raised and the consumers can't pay becomes a very interesting issue. Detroit has raised their prices and then started to cut off consumers that don't pay. Something UN has criticized Detroit for: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detroit-water-shutoffs_n_5533901.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detr... http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water-shutoffs/ http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water...
- gaius 12y ago
  It's the kind of "right" that only exists if other people provide it - people who quite reasonably, don't see your "right" as a reason they should work for free.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    This is also true of a right to own land, unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. And after you stop that person, who's to say you had the right to, and that the person's friends shouldn't come back and teach you the error of your ways? My point is, if you can't have water because someone else claims they own it, their ownership claim is backed up by the positive effort of others just as much as your claim to the water is, if not more so. "Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." — Thomas Jefferson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... )
    - anon1385 12y ago
      >unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. It's worth noting that in some countries (Scotland, Norway) there is no such thing as trespass. So not only do you not have government assistance with preventing people walking on your land, you are not legally allowed to enforce that yourself either. On the topic of land ownership: A Scottish miner is walking home one evening with a brace of pheasants. He unexpectedly meets the landowner who informs him that this is his land and he better hand over the pheasants: 'Your land eh' asks the miner. 'Yes', replies the laird, 'and my pheasants.' 'And who did you get this land from?' 'Well, I inherited it from my father.' 'And who did he get it from?' the miner insists. 'His father of course. The land has been in my family for over 400 years' the laird splutters. 'OK, so how did your family come to own this land 400 years ago?' the miner asks. 'Well… well… they fought for it!' 'Fine,' replies the miner. 'Take your jacket off and I'll fight you for it now.'
      - arnsholt 12y ago
        At least in Norway, it's not quite that there's no notion of trespass. But it only applies to (from memory) within 100 metres of cultivated land and houses and such. So you can trespass, just not in the forests and mountains. The freedom to roam doesn't include the right to hunt wherever you want though. =)
      - arethuza 12y ago
        I don't think it's quite true to say there are no trespass laws in Scotland - there is still laws against aggravated and collective trespass and there is a rather long list of laws governing access to other peoples land. However, the general rule is that we do have a "right to roam" with the condition that people accessing land are sensible about it: http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ Land ownership in Scotland is incredibly complex - I can recommend the book "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it": http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114X http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
        12y ago
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Hmmmm that's why we have democratic governments, and in some countries we have decided that since it's a right to have access to water, the government should handle distribution of water from our taxes. So people working at the facilities are still getting paid, but the water is provided for free* for any citizen. *yes, paid from the taxes, I feel like I need to point this out otherwise someone else will.
  - JoachimS 12y ago
    No. It is a formal right that the United States among other countries has signed and thus mus adhere to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
  - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
    Water as in a public water works is quite the public good. Given that water and sewage are closely related ( you can have sewage management without it, but it's riskier - we're talking outhouses, which require some management ), I'd be perfectly willing to help pay for poor people's water out of purest self interest. There's the problem of identifying who might be eligible, but I'm ignoring that for now.
- slavik81 12y ago
  This doesn't sound like a hard problem to solve. Give everyone a basic personal amount for free and charge for anything above that. Though basic individual usage is really not the problem, anyways. Households don't use all that much water, and most of it can be returned to the waterways after treatment. Water pricing is much more important for affecting the behaviour of businesses.
  - muriithi 12y ago
    How will you define "everyone"? Will the government find out how many people live in a certain household and use that to arrive at a "basic personal amount" of water?
    - slavik81 12y ago
      There's lots of options, but a possible method would be to give a coupon code to individuals who ask for one. They could then apply it against the bill for their household. It's also not too expensive to err on the safe side and give out a generous personal amount. In the quantities that an individual uses, water is pretty darn cheap.
      - richthegeek 12y ago
        What quantifies as cheap? In the UK (central Manchester) we pay about ~£300 (~$500) per person per year.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        slavik81 12y ago
        I should probably have specified marginal cost. If I did my math right, it's a fraction of a cent per litre on the margin. The fixed costs are a large part of that total price.
    - rmc 12y ago
      Yes? "Want your free water supply for X people? Prove X to us"
- icambron 12y ago
  The right thing to do is decouple the pricing of water from the economic justice. Let water have a market price. Send money to poor people, which they can use on water or not water (it's crucially important that it's unrestricted money). You can even fund it with the extra revenue from the water sales. All the same benefits, but with less distortion. The value of money is that it enables markets; when markets fail poor people, instead of breaking the market (free parking in urban areas, rent control, etc), it's more beneficial for everyone to just give poor people money and let them participate.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  Well, yes. Why do you think that the US and the UK, two profoundly pro-fracking (which isn't going to do anything nice to the availability and potability of water) nations, are both profoundly anti-human-rights - as are, inexplicably, their populaces, who seem to have forgotten that they too are human.
- Omniusaspirer 12y ago
  Detroit is an odd case because it's largely a case of exploitation by people who simply decided they didn't have to pay their water bill anymore- after all- who would dare to deprive someone of water?! That these people got bit in the ass on their delinquency doesn't really bother me. Here's a quote from the official report: "In May, for example, DWSD sent out 46,000 shut off notices. Of those, only 4,531 customers less than 10 percent of the total had their water service shut off for any period of time. Within 24 hours, 60 percent of the affected customers paid their accounts in full and had their service immediately restored. Forty percent of the remaining customers had their service restored within 48 hours." The people who honestly can't afford it should have mechanisms to waive their water bill costs but the above quote clearly shows that's a tiny fraction of the people who actually got shutoff notices. The trick of course is that many of these small minority needs to be proactively contacted by the city government since they're likely mentally ill/severely disabled and possibly lack the ability to take the initiative on their own.
  - JoachimS 12y ago
    The thing is that all those arguments are fairly moot. The United States has signed the declaration of human rights and thus it cannot withhold water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
    - icambron 12y ago
      Leaving aside the UDHR's enforceability in the US, the document doesn't actually include the word "water" or "drink". What it does include is this: > (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. IANAL and don't know much about international law, but I'm guessing that's what people mean when they talk about the right to water, since certainly water is necessary for health and on par with food and shelter, and it's reasonable to read water into that article. But it's hard to imagine that means the government can't use shutting off water as an enforcement mechanism for water prices. That would be largely the same as saying that right is actually not to have water, but to not pay for it. If you take that to mean "you don't have to pay for water", you're also saying you don't have to pay for clothes or housing. If I don't pay my rent, can the government enforce my eviction? Or does my right to housing supersede that? What if I have a huge house and piles of money? I think it makes more sense to say that you have a right to access water on reasonable and affordable terms. If you can afford water but opt not to, you're not being deprived of water in the relevant sense.
clumsysmurf 12y ago
After reading this, I was reminded of an older 2006 article also from the NYT "There's Money in Thirst". Its a good companion to this article. I hope thirst isn't a business opportunity that leaves many without. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10water.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10w...
- Marry_09 12y ago
  Awesome article clumsysmurf. Thanks for sharing
nitrogen 12y ago
Complaining about farmers using too much water is the same as complaining about people eating too much food. The word "food" doesn't even occur in this article that appears to have started with a conclusion ("markets are magic!!!") and omitted facts until the conclusion was justified. The disruption to our nation's economy and lower classes caused by an increase in food prices or scarcity as a result of hasty water management changes would potentially destabilize society. Edit: the article also failed to mention that the water delivered to farmers has most likely not been purified, chlorinated, or protected from animals, so of course it will be cheaper than culinary water.
- deleted 12y ago
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- stickfigure 12y ago
  Given how inexpensive it is to ship food (see: any out-of-season vegetable), expensive water in dry regions like CA seems unlikely to have a significant impact on overall food prices. It might disrupt the local economies of certain farming regions, though this would arguably be a good thing for the economy as a whole.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Given how inexpensive it is to ship food (see: any out-of-season vegetable), expensive water in dry regions like CA seems unlikely to have a significant impact on overall food prices. Sure, shipping food may be cheap, but you can't ship food that isn't being grown, and there's not an extra unused lot the size of California's agricultural land lying around waiting to take up the slack that differs only in the cost of shipping to the end consumer. Lost production in California is lost supply, and will effect prices.
- gnopgnip 12y ago
  The price of many foods would not be affected by an increase in the cost of water. This is referred to as pricing goods at what the market will bear. Additionally if the end goal is to provide affordable food, there are more direct means to this end.
hawkice 12y ago
By far the best reference on this subject is the Aguanomics blog and his book Living With Water Scarcity. This article barely scratches the surface of the insanity of water allocation and the difficulties of regulation surrounding the industry. Suffice it to say, making water more expensive might not even be a solution until is it extremely expensive, because we already have water pricing so complex (in many places in the US) that many people have no idea what their water needs are or how to efficiently use water. Roughly a sixth of residential water usage in some areas effected by the drought in California is leaked from the building's pipes unused. The solutions are complex, involve analyzing risk and allowing high water prices in years without scarcity to fund investment in infrastructure (desalination, for instance) to avoid scarcity turning into a shortage (which no one wants).
- deleted 12y ago
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lucaspiller 12y ago
I live in Dubai, where apparently the city has the highest worldwide per capita usage of 500 gallons/day [0] (18 months ago, so probably higher now) but we also have fairly cheap water, it works out to be about US$10/1000 gallons. Even though we are in the desert, we don't have any restrictions on water usage (there is a nice green park next to my apartment). Apart from cheap fuel, one of the main reasons why is that water production is by-product of electricity production. Most of the electricity here is produced by natural gas (yep, not oil) which is used to heat water into steam to drive turbines. This needs a lot of water, which there isn't really much in the desert, so it uses sea water. This distills the water, after which limestone is added to make it potable (drinking water has quite a lot of minerals in it, so drinking distilled water isn't that great for you) and then it is sent to the water grid. The overall process has an efficiency of 82%. Further reading: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uae-s-largest-power-and-desalination-plant-opens-at-jebel-ali http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uae-s-largest-power-... https://www.dubal.ae/who-we-are/our-production-process/power-desalination.aspx https://www.dubal.ae/who-we-are/our-production-process/power... [0] http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/uae-water-consumption-highest-in-the-world-2013-03-13-1.498498 http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/uae-water-consumpti...
- ikawe 12y ago
  > Most of the electricity here is produced by natural gas (yep, not oil) Natural gas is often captured as a byproduct of oil, but it's trickier to transport. Perhaps that explains why they'd be burning it there while shipping off the crude.
- rmc 12y ago
  Dubai is a weird wonderland. It's an example of what you can do when you're filthy rich with oil money and want to show off.
- dharma1 12y ago
  One would think that solar energy/desalination in the middle of a desert would be a better option than burning gas.. oh well
  - 12y ago
AshFurrow 12y ago
Yeah, so markets aren't necessarily the answer to everything. Simply making water more expensive isn't necessarily going to decrease its consumption, as hawkice has said in this thread. And I'm really not a fan of how this article vilifies the farmers. This quote sums it up: > [This awesome thing would give] farmers an opportunity to sell their [water] rights to developers rather than using them for low-value crops. "Low-value crops", eh? Sure, make farmers use water more efficiently, but it seems pretty silly to value the construction of new buildings over the production of food.
- gambiting 12y ago
  Yeah, it's like saying that people drive too much,so we should increase the price of fuel tenfold,so they will drive less. All is great, but if because of it they now can't afford to get to work, then you have just created a new host of problems. Increasing the price of water seems like a knee-jerk reaction to this problem.
- Xylakant 12y ago
  > "Low-value crops", eh? Sure, make farmers use water more efficiently, but it seems pretty silly to value the construction of new buildings over the production of food. Is it really that easy? Food >> Buildings? A lot of crops are grown that never end up on your plate - biofuel, exported food, stuff that in the end rots in the silos. It might really be valuable to rethink the priorities here.
  - AshFurrow 12y ago
    If we want to have that discussion, I think that'd be a great one to have. But that was not the author's intention.
- deleted 12y ago
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- pjc50 12y ago
  You can import food. You can't import housing.
- 12y ago
throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago
Here's all the cost figures in metric, in case you forgot how to handle gallons => acre-feet in your head. cost / cubic meter [ Residential ] $0.63 Fresno $1.69 Boston $2.64 HN'er in Dubai [ Agriculture ] $0.02 CA Imperial Irrigation District ($0.016, rounded) $0.16+ San Diego [ Desalination plants ] $1.62 San Diego Alfalfa's market value is $0.75 per m^3 of water used growing it. (The article compared this to the $1.62 desal figure: i.e., at market (?) rates, growing it would be a net loss). Here's a related factsheet of California water statistics. Tap water amounts to 9 km^3/year; irrigation is 32 km^3. http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use.html http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...
- lucian1900 12y ago
  > in case you forgot how to handle gallons => acre-feet in your head Or in case those have no intuitive meaning to you :) Thanks.
  - fennecfoxen 12y ago
    A gallon is ~4 litres (two large bottles of soda) and an acre is a the small end of a soccer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H football-field (or half of a big one). For an acre-foot, that's all underwater, up to your shins. Or maybe you just stacked all the soda bottles next to each other, they're about a foot tall...
madaxe_again 12y ago
Between the lines, this reads as: "Water prices are going up. Consumers will need to use less, because they won't be able to afford as much. If that affects them... boo hoo. We'd rather have water riots than go up against the agribusiness lobby, who can't and won't pay for water - they wouldn't be profitable if they weren't - and being unprofitable is anti-american!"
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  There is evidence[1] that Jimmy Carter was going after the water rates Central Valley farmers owe the U.S. government. This cause Ronald Reagan's campaign to be better financed. Don't know if it can be credited with costing Carter the election, but it was a factor. [1] I recall the story as being from the book "Cadillac Desert".
nb1981 12y ago
So if you can pay (more) it's OK to use more? We never learn.
mmphosis 12y ago
I think that selling water only brings more scarcity. Money is cheap. Maybe we need a monetary system backed by clean drinking water. Money as water. WaterCoin could be created by producing clean drinking water. The algorithm would encourage water to be abundant.
graycat 12y ago
For years, off and on, I've seen scare stories about running out of water. Broadly, the situation is really simple: In some parts of the world, water suitable for humans and/or agriculture is scarce, but in other parts of the world such water is plentiful. In simplest terms, if are concerned about water, then don't live in a desert. For me, no worries, mate: I live in the US 70 miles north of Wall Street, and my water comes from a well in my front yard. There's an electric pump at the bottom of the well, and everything's fine. I have no swimming pool, but my neighbors on both sides do, and they have similar wells. We have no water shortage at all. Indeed, each spring there's enough melted snow and rain to totally soak the ground with the excess water running off into, no doubt, the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean. Is it good water? It seems fine. I have a filter in the line; the filter is some tube about a foot long and 2 inches in diameter, sometimes of some foam and other times a bunch of thread wrapped tightly. The water flows through the tube, and any little pits of dirt, gravel, etc. get filtered out. I have a supply of about a half-dozen new filters, and I replace a filter about once each two years whether needed or not. Yes, the water is totally saturated with CaCO3, that is, calcium carbonate. No worries, mate. Everything in my kitchen is nice and clean with no sign of CaCO3 deposits. Hot water coils? Yup, since hot water dissolves CaCO3 less well than cold water, I get CaCO3 deposits in the hot water coils. So, maybe twice a year I use some HCl, a drill pump, and two garden hoses to clean out the CaCO3 from the hot water coils. Of course the reaction generates CaCL2 and CO2. No biggie. For the water I use, it's not really lost but goes to my septic tank. Right, no sewer and just a backyard septic tank instead. What comes out of the septic tank goes into a drain field in my backyard and, then, no doubt helps keep the backyard moist. Some of that water likely leaks into a stream that runs past the back of the property, and the stream no doubt soon ends up in the Hudson River. No worries, mate. So, I pay nothing for the drinking water and nothing for sewer. Trash? Paper and plastic I burn in the fireplace. Bottles and cans I accumulate and occasionally, once each few years, make a midnight deposit in a dumpster someplace. Those bottles and cans causing a gigantic pile up of trash that is covering the globe, as has been claimed by other alarmists? Nope: Instead what I dump is a very high grade aluminum mine. The article is more from the Alarmist Industry. The theme is: Humans are evil. They are all sinners. They are greedy, filthy, and wasteful. They are committing sinful, destructive, dangerous, short-sighted transgressions against the 100% pure, pristine, precious, delicate, sensitive, beautiful natural environment of Mother Nature. This transgression will led to just horrible retribution as just payback from injured, angry Mother Nature. The only course is redemption via sacrifice, discipline, denial, conservation, and more in costs, taxes, regulations, etc. Uh, where have we heard this trilogy, this line, before? How about 1000 years ago in the English morality plays? It's called a guilt trip, exploiting the vulnerability of people to become afraid of dangers from the unknown. Laying on such a guilt trip has been a favorite scam of charlatans for at least 1000 years. No doubt one of the reasons for The Age of Reason was to have means to separate truth from superstitions and fears based on ignorance. Yes, Virginia, there really are some dangers. And we need to understand such dangers and do something effective about them. Dangers? Ebola, if we are not careful. Polio unless we take vaccines seriously or just eliminate the virus from the environment. Similarly for several other diseases for which we have good vaccines. In some locations, earthquakes. In some locations, hurricanes. In some locations, blizzards. In some locations, water shortages. And, now, with the media, in all locations, alarmist charlatans using misleading nonsense to try to grab us by the gut, make us afraid, create a flim-flam, fraud scam, and get on our backs and into our pockets, all as their career. Apparently there is a big industry for such. And, of course, the media like such stories -- screaming "danger!" -- to get eyeballs for ad revenue. Virginia, it's a scam, exploiting ignorance. Broadly the solution is knowledge, education, and rationality. Here, let's call a scam what it is and try to push back against such destructive nonsense. So, this article is from the NYT. Okay, for years I've concluded that the NYT can't pass up an opportunity to try to get their (sucker!) readers up on their hind legs by running scare stories about the sky is falling. So, I long ago gave up on the NYT being rational or responsible. Emotional? Yes. Even paranoid? Yes. Rational? No. If they were rational and responsible, then many of their stories with a lot of eyeballs would go away. But, also, due to their nonsense, I went away. So, back in the days of paper, I refused to have their trash in the house, even for free. Now the NYT is running stories of wide variety, and maybe some of the stories have some okay, rational, informational content. Maybe. But the NYT, from their long standard goal of grabbing people by the heart, the gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, rarely between the ears, has left me so pissed off I just can't take them seriously. Clearly the NYT understands formula fiction, that is, sympathetic White Hat protagonists facing danger, dangerous Black Hats threatening the White Hats, with strong issues of morality, etc. So, the NYT takes whatever they can find and presents it using the techniques of formula fiction. Long ago, my brother had an English prof who just asserted that the news is mostly from just the techniques of formula fiction. Informing the readers is not the goal. Instead the goal is ad revenue from eyeballs from grabbing people emotionally by the heart, gut, and below the belt. Long ago one of the news anchors on one of the three major TV networks explained that the evening news was not healthy for viewers because it got the viewers highly concerned about things they could do nothing about. Not a full description of what is wrong with the media but a description of part of it. We gotta push back against this nonsense. NYT, here's some feedback for you: Your content is alarmist, wildly overly emotional, irrational, irresponsible, and frustrating; you just piss me off; and mostly I just will refuse to pay attention to your stuff. You can keep writing that nonsense, but I will rarely read it. And, as a matter of principle, I will just never pay for that nonsense. And, as here, in public I will push back against your nonsense. Did I mention your nonsense? I don't want to leave out that I regard nearly everything you write as nonsense or worse. You are getting this?

55 points by whyenot 12y ago

At the same time the right to water has been protected by UN as a basic human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water For this reason what happens when the price for water is raised and the consumers can't pay becomes a very interesting issue. Detroit has raised their prices and then started to cut off consumers that don't pay. Something UN has criticized Detroit for: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detroit-water-shutoffs_n_5533901.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/26/united-nations-detr... http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water-shutoffs/ http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-n-to-intervene-in-detroit-water...

gaius 12y ago
It's the kind of "right" that only exists if other people provide it - people who quite reasonably, don't see your "right" as a reason they should work for free.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  This is also true of a right to own land, unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. And after you stop that person, who's to say you had the right to, and that the person's friends shouldn't come back and teach you the error of your ways? My point is, if you can't have water because someone else claims they own it, their ownership claim is backed up by the positive effort of others just as much as your claim to the water is, if not more so. "Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society." — Thomas Jefferson ( http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.... )
  - anon1385 12y ago
    >unless you are actually out there physically patrolling your property with an intent to stop someone from trespassing. It's worth noting that in some countries (Scotland, Norway) there is no such thing as trespass. So not only do you not have government assistance with preventing people walking on your land, you are not legally allowed to enforce that yourself either. On the topic of land ownership: A Scottish miner is walking home one evening with a brace of pheasants. He unexpectedly meets the landowner who informs him that this is his land and he better hand over the pheasants: 'Your land eh' asks the miner. 'Yes', replies the laird, 'and my pheasants.' 'And who did you get this land from?' 'Well, I inherited it from my father.' 'And who did he get it from?' the miner insists. 'His father of course. The land has been in my family for over 400 years' the laird splutters. 'OK, so how did your family come to own this land 400 years ago?' the miner asks. 'Well… well… they fought for it!' 'Fine,' replies the miner. 'Take your jacket off and I'll fight you for it now.'
    - arnsholt 12y ago
      At least in Norway, it's not quite that there's no notion of trespass. But it only applies to (from memory) within 100 metres of cultivated land and houses and such. So you can trespass, just not in the forests and mountains. The freedom to roam doesn't include the right to hunt wherever you want though. =)
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I don't think it's quite true to say there are no trespass laws in Scotland - there is still laws against aggravated and collective trespass and there is a rather long list of laws governing access to other peoples land. However, the general rule is that we do have a "right to roam" with the condition that people accessing land are sensible about it: http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/ Land ownership in Scotland is incredibly complex - I can recommend the book "The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it": http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114X http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No-Lawyers/dp/178027114...
      - 12y ago
- gambiting 12y ago
  Hmmmm that's why we have democratic governments, and in some countries we have decided that since it's a right to have access to water, the government should handle distribution of water from our taxes. So people working at the facilities are still getting paid, but the water is provided for free* for any citizen. *yes, paid from the taxes, I feel like I need to point this out otherwise someone else will.
- JoachimS 12y ago
  No. It is a formal right that the United States among other countries has signed and thus mus adhere to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  Water as in a public water works is quite the public good. Given that water and sewage are closely related ( you can have sewage management without it, but it's riskier - we're talking outhouses, which require some management ), I'd be perfectly willing to help pay for poor people's water out of purest self interest. There's the problem of identifying who might be eligible, but I'm ignoring that for now.
slavik81 12y ago
This doesn't sound like a hard problem to solve. Give everyone a basic personal amount for free and charge for anything above that. Though basic individual usage is really not the problem, anyways. Households don't use all that much water, and most of it can be returned to the waterways after treatment. Water pricing is much more important for affecting the behaviour of businesses.
- muriithi 12y ago
  How will you define "everyone"? Will the government find out how many people live in a certain household and use that to arrive at a "basic personal amount" of water?
  - slavik81 12y ago
    There's lots of options, but a possible method would be to give a coupon code to individuals who ask for one. They could then apply it against the bill for their household. It's also not too expensive to err on the safe side and give out a generous personal amount. In the quantities that an individual uses, water is pretty darn cheap.
    - richthegeek 12y ago
      What quantifies as cheap? In the UK (central Manchester) we pay about ~£300 (~$500) per person per year.
      - deleted 12y ago
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      - slavik81 12y ago
        I should probably have specified marginal cost. If I did my math right, it's a fraction of a cent per litre on the margin. The fixed costs are a large part of that total price.
  - rmc 12y ago
    Yes? "Want your free water supply for X people? Prove X to us"
icambron 12y ago
The right thing to do is decouple the pricing of water from the economic justice. Let water have a market price. Send money to poor people, which they can use on water or not water (it's crucially important that it's unrestricted money). You can even fund it with the extra revenue from the water sales. All the same benefits, but with less distortion. The value of money is that it enables markets; when markets fail poor people, instead of breaking the market (free parking in urban areas, rent control, etc), it's more beneficial for everyone to just give poor people money and let them participate.
madaxe_again 12y ago
Well, yes. Why do you think that the US and the UK, two profoundly pro-fracking (which isn't going to do anything nice to the availability and potability of water) nations, are both profoundly anti-human-rights - as are, inexplicably, their populaces, who seem to have forgotten that they too are human.
Omniusaspirer 12y ago
Detroit is an odd case because it's largely a case of exploitation by people who simply decided they didn't have to pay their water bill anymore- after all- who would dare to deprive someone of water?! That these people got bit in the ass on their delinquency doesn't really bother me. Here's a quote from the official report: "In May, for example, DWSD sent out 46,000 shut off notices. Of those, only 4,531 customers less than 10 percent of the total had their water service shut off for any period of time. Within 24 hours, 60 percent of the affected customers paid their accounts in full and had their service immediately restored. Forty percent of the remaining customers had their service restored within 48 hours." The people who honestly can't afford it should have mechanisms to waive their water bill costs but the above quote clearly shows that's a tiny fraction of the people who actually got shutoff notices. The trick of course is that many of these small minority needs to be proactively contacted by the city government since they're likely mentally ill/severely disabled and possibly lack the ability to take the initiative on their own.
- JoachimS 12y ago
  The thing is that all those arguments are fairly moot. The United States has signed the declaration of human rights and thus it cannot withhold water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...
  - icambron 12y ago
    Leaving aside the UDHR's enforceability in the US, the document doesn't actually include the word "water" or "drink". What it does include is this: > (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. IANAL and don't know much about international law, but I'm guessing that's what people mean when they talk about the right to water, since certainly water is necessary for health and on par with food and shelter, and it's reasonable to read water into that article. But it's hard to imagine that means the government can't use shutting off water as an enforcement mechanism for water prices. That would be largely the same as saying that right is actually not to have water, but to not pay for it. If you take that to mean "you don't have to pay for water", you're also saying you don't have to pay for clothes or housing. If I don't pay my rent, can the government enforce my eviction? Or does my right to housing supersede that? What if I have a huge house and piles of money? I think it makes more sense to say that you have a right to access water on reasonable and affordable terms. If you can afford water but opt not to, you're not being deprived of water in the relevant sense.

clumsysmurf 12y ago

After reading this, I was reminded of an older 2006 article also from the NYT "There's Money in Thirst". Its a good companion to this article. I hope thirst isn't a business opportunity that leaves many without. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10water.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10w...

Marry_09 12y ago
Awesome article clumsysmurf. Thanks for sharing

nitrogen 12y ago

Complaining about farmers using too much water is the same as complaining about people eating too much food. The word "food" doesn't even occur in this article that appears to have started with a conclusion ("markets are magic!!!") and omitted facts until the conclusion was justified. The disruption to our nation's economy and lower classes caused by an increase in food prices or scarcity as a result of hasty water management changes would potentially destabilize society. Edit: the article also failed to mention that the water delivered to farmers has most likely not been purified, chlorinated, or protected from animals, so of course it will be cheaper than culinary water.

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stickfigure 12y ago
Given how inexpensive it is to ship food (see: any out-of-season vegetable), expensive water in dry regions like CA seems unlikely to have a significant impact on overall food prices. It might disrupt the local economies of certain farming regions, though this would arguably be a good thing for the economy as a whole.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Given how inexpensive it is to ship food (see: any out-of-season vegetable), expensive water in dry regions like CA seems unlikely to have a significant impact on overall food prices. Sure, shipping food may be cheap, but you can't ship food that isn't being grown, and there's not an extra unused lot the size of California's agricultural land lying around waiting to take up the slack that differs only in the cost of shipping to the end consumer. Lost production in California is lost supply, and will effect prices.
gnopgnip 12y ago
The price of many foods would not be affected by an increase in the cost of water. This is referred to as pricing goods at what the market will bear. Additionally if the end goal is to provide affordable food, there are more direct means to this end.

hawkice 12y ago

By far the best reference on this subject is the Aguanomics blog and his book Living With Water Scarcity. This article barely scratches the surface of the insanity of water allocation and the difficulties of regulation surrounding the industry. Suffice it to say, making water more expensive might not even be a solution until is it extremely expensive, because we already have water pricing so complex (in many places in the US) that many people have no idea what their water needs are or how to efficiently use water. Roughly a sixth of residential water usage in some areas effected by the drought in California is leaked from the building's pipes unused. The solutions are complex, involve analyzing risk and allowing high water prices in years without scarcity to fund investment in infrastructure (desalination, for instance) to avoid scarcity turning into a shortage (which no one wants).

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lucaspiller 12y ago

I live in Dubai, where apparently the city has the highest worldwide per capita usage of 500 gallons/day [0] (18 months ago, so probably higher now) but we also have fairly cheap water, it works out to be about US$10/1000 gallons. Even though we are in the desert, we don't have any restrictions on water usage (there is a nice green park next to my apartment). Apart from cheap fuel, one of the main reasons why is that water production is by-product of electricity production. Most of the electricity here is produced by natural gas (yep, not oil) which is used to heat water into steam to drive turbines. This needs a lot of water, which there isn't really much in the desert, so it uses sea water. This distills the water, after which limestone is added to make it potable (drinking water has quite a lot of minerals in it, so drinking distilled water isn't that great for you) and then it is sent to the water grid. The overall process has an efficiency of 82%. Further reading: http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uae-s-largest-power-and-desalination-plant-opens-at-jebel-ali http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/uae-s-largest-power-... https://www.dubal.ae/who-we-are/our-production-process/power-desalination.aspx https://www.dubal.ae/who-we-are/our-production-process/power... [0] http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/uae-water-consumption-highest-in-the-world-2013-03-13-1.498498 http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/uae-water-consumpti...

ikawe 12y ago
> Most of the electricity here is produced by natural gas (yep, not oil) Natural gas is often captured as a byproduct of oil, but it's trickier to transport. Perhaps that explains why they'd be burning it there while shipping off the crude.
rmc 12y ago
Dubai is a weird wonderland. It's an example of what you can do when you're filthy rich with oil money and want to show off.
dharma1 12y ago
One would think that solar energy/desalination in the middle of a desert would be a better option than burning gas.. oh well
- 12y ago

AshFurrow 12y ago

Yeah, so markets aren't necessarily the answer to everything. Simply making water more expensive isn't necessarily going to decrease its consumption, as hawkice has said in this thread. And I'm really not a fan of how this article vilifies the farmers. This quote sums it up: > [This awesome thing would give] farmers an opportunity to sell their [water] rights to developers rather than using them for low-value crops. "Low-value crops", eh? Sure, make farmers use water more efficiently, but it seems pretty silly to value the construction of new buildings over the production of food.

gambiting 12y ago
Yeah, it's like saying that people drive too much,so we should increase the price of fuel tenfold,so they will drive less. All is great, but if because of it they now can't afford to get to work, then you have just created a new host of problems. Increasing the price of water seems like a knee-jerk reaction to this problem.
Xylakant 12y ago
> "Low-value crops", eh? Sure, make farmers use water more efficiently, but it seems pretty silly to value the construction of new buildings over the production of food. Is it really that easy? Food >> Buildings? A lot of crops are grown that never end up on your plate - biofuel, exported food, stuff that in the end rots in the silos. It might really be valuable to rethink the priorities here.
- AshFurrow 12y ago
  If we want to have that discussion, I think that'd be a great one to have. But that was not the author's intention.
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pjc50 12y ago
You can import food. You can't import housing.
12y ago

throwaway_yy2Di 12y ago

Here's all the cost figures in metric, in case you forgot how to handle gallons => acre-feet in your head. cost / cubic meter [ Residential ] $0.63 Fresno $1.69 Boston $2.64 HN'er in Dubai [ Agriculture ] $0.02 CA Imperial Irrigation District ($0.016, rounded) $0.16+ San Diego [ Desalination plants ] $1.62 San Diego Alfalfa's market value is $0.75 per m^3 of water used growing it. (The article compared this to the $1.62 desal figure: i.e., at market (?) rates, growing it would be a net loss). Here's a related factsheet of California water statistics. Tap water amounts to 9 km^3/year; irrigation is 32 km^3. http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use.html http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

lucian1900 12y ago
> in case you forgot how to handle gallons => acre-feet in your head Or in case those have no intuitive meaning to you :) Thanks.
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  A gallon is ~4 litres (two large bottles of soda) and an acre is a the small end of a soccer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H football-field (or half of a big one). For an acre-foot, that's all underwater, up to your shins. Or maybe you just stacked all the soda bottles next to each other, they're about a foot tall...

madaxe_again 12y ago

Between the lines, this reads as: "Water prices are going up. Consumers will need to use less, because they won't be able to afford as much. If that affects them... boo hoo. We'd rather have water riots than go up against the agribusiness lobby, who can't and won't pay for water - they wouldn't be profitable if they weren't - and being unprofitable is anti-american!"

ArkyBeagle 12y ago
There is evidence[1] that Jimmy Carter was going after the water rates Central Valley farmers owe the U.S. government. This cause Ronald Reagan's campaign to be better financed. Don't know if it can be credited with costing Carter the election, but it was a factor. [1] I recall the story as being from the book "Cadillac Desert".

nb1981 12y ago

So if you can pay (more) it's OK to use more? We never learn.

mmphosis 12y ago

I think that selling water only brings more scarcity. Money is cheap. Maybe we need a monetary system backed by clean drinking water. Money as water. WaterCoin could be created by producing clean drinking water. The algorithm would encourage water to be abundant.

graycat 12y ago

For years, off and on, I've seen scare stories about running out of water. Broadly, the situation is really simple: In some parts of the world, water suitable for humans and/or agriculture is scarce, but in other parts of the world such water is plentiful. In simplest terms, if are concerned about water, then don't live in a desert. For me, no worries, mate: I live in the US 70 miles north of Wall Street, and my water comes from a well in my front yard. There's an electric pump at the bottom of the well, and everything's fine. I have no swimming pool, but my neighbors on both sides do, and they have similar wells. We have no water shortage at all. Indeed, each spring there's enough melted snow and rain to totally soak the ground with the excess water running off into, no doubt, the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean. Is it good water? It seems fine. I have a filter in the line; the filter is some tube about a foot long and 2 inches in diameter, sometimes of some foam and other times a bunch of thread wrapped tightly. The water flows through the tube, and any little pits of dirt, gravel, etc. get filtered out. I have a supply of about a half-dozen new filters, and I replace a filter about once each two years whether needed or not. Yes, the water is totally saturated with CaCO3, that is, calcium carbonate. No worries, mate. Everything in my kitchen is nice and clean with no sign of CaCO3 deposits. Hot water coils? Yup, since hot water dissolves CaCO3 less well than cold water, I get CaCO3 deposits in the hot water coils. So, maybe twice a year I use some HCl, a drill pump, and two garden hoses to clean out the CaCO3 from the hot water coils. Of course the reaction generates CaCL2 and CO2. No biggie. For the water I use, it's not really lost but goes to my septic tank. Right, no sewer and just a backyard septic tank instead. What comes out of the septic tank goes into a drain field in my backyard and, then, no doubt helps keep the backyard moist. Some of that water likely leaks into a stream that runs past the back of the property, and the stream no doubt soon ends up in the Hudson River. No worries, mate. So, I pay nothing for the drinking water and nothing for sewer. Trash? Paper and plastic I burn in the fireplace. Bottles and cans I accumulate and occasionally, once each few years, make a midnight deposit in a dumpster someplace. Those bottles and cans causing a gigantic pile up of trash that is covering the globe, as has been claimed by other alarmists? Nope: Instead what I dump is a very high grade aluminum mine. The article is more from the Alarmist Industry. The theme is: Humans are evil. They are all sinners. They are greedy, filthy, and wasteful. They are committing sinful, destructive, dangerous, short-sighted transgressions against the 100% pure, pristine, precious, delicate, sensitive, beautiful natural environment of Mother Nature. This transgression will led to just horrible retribution as just payback from injured, angry Mother Nature. The only course is redemption via sacrifice, discipline, denial, conservation, and more in costs, taxes, regulations, etc. Uh, where have we heard this trilogy, this line, before? How about 1000 years ago in the English morality plays? It's called a guilt trip, exploiting the vulnerability of people to become afraid of dangers from the unknown. Laying on such a guilt trip has been a favorite scam of charlatans for at least 1000 years. No doubt one of the reasons for The Age of Reason was to have means to separate truth from superstitions and fears based on ignorance. Yes, Virginia, there really are some dangers. And we need to understand such dangers and do something effective about them. Dangers? Ebola, if we are not careful. Polio unless we take vaccines seriously or just eliminate the virus from the environment. Similarly for several other diseases for which we have good vaccines. In some locations, earthquakes. In some locations, hurricanes. In some locations, blizzards. In some locations, water shortages. And, now, with the media, in all locations, alarmist charlatans using misleading nonsense to try to grab us by the gut, make us afraid, create a flim-flam, fraud scam, and get on our backs and into our pockets, all as their career. Apparently there is a big industry for such. And, of course, the media like such stories -- screaming "danger!" -- to get eyeballs for ad revenue. Virginia, it's a scam, exploiting ignorance. Broadly the solution is knowledge, education, and rationality. Here, let's call a scam what it is and try to push back against such destructive nonsense. So, this article is from the NYT. Okay, for years I've concluded that the NYT can't pass up an opportunity to try to get their (sucker!) readers up on their hind legs by running scare stories about the sky is falling. So, I long ago gave up on the NYT being rational or responsible. Emotional? Yes. Even paranoid? Yes. Rational? No. If they were rational and responsible, then many of their stories with a lot of eyeballs would go away. But, also, due to their nonsense, I went away. So, back in the days of paper, I refused to have their trash in the house, even for free. Now the NYT is running stories of wide variety, and maybe some of the stories have some okay, rational, informational content. Maybe. But the NYT, from their long standard goal of grabbing people by the heart, the gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, rarely between the ears, has left me so pissed off I just can't take them seriously. Clearly the NYT understands formula fiction, that is, sympathetic White Hat protagonists facing danger, dangerous Black Hats threatening the White Hats, with strong issues of morality, etc. So, the NYT takes whatever they can find and presents it using the techniques of formula fiction. Long ago, my brother had an English prof who just asserted that the news is mostly from just the techniques of formula fiction. Informing the readers is not the goal. Instead the goal is ad revenue from eyeballs from grabbing people emotionally by the heart, gut, and below the belt. Long ago one of the news anchors on one of the three major TV networks explained that the evening news was not healthy for viewers because it got the viewers highly concerned about things they could do nothing about. Not a full description of what is wrong with the media but a description of part of it. We gotta push back against this nonsense. NYT, here's some feedback for you: Your content is alarmist, wildly overly emotional, irrational, irresponsible, and frustrating; you just piss me off; and mostly I just will refuse to pay attention to your stuff. You can keep writing that nonsense, but I will rarely read it. And, as a matter of principle, I will just never pay for that nonsense. And, as here, in public I will push back against your nonsense. Did I mention your nonsense? I don't want to leave out that I regard nearly everything you write as nonsense or worse. You are getting this?