Comments on: Fact-checking drought-water pricing

By: DJ

DJ — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 19:55:23 +0000

Thanks to the author for providing a well-organized, well-argued post with links to all of the sources!

I’m a little unclear still, though, what your solutions are that would not require any incurred costs and also limit withdrawals to prevent literally running out of water (eff it, even if the water supply quantity has stayed the same, there are more people using more water… increased storage capacity ain’t gonna cut it in watersheds that are >200% overutilized). So, regarding solutions, a few quick points:

– Supply side increases? What if the technology is not currently economically feasible? Do you subsidize it with… increased taxes? Most supply increases are currently far more economically unfeasible than other proposed solutions.

– Clearly the current permitting/auctioning/rights methods aren’t working. Yeah, it sucks if someone has bought and paid for water withdrawal rights and it gets taken away, but it also sucks when water supplies for a watershed or region hit zero and NOBODY can use it. This is a collective problem and if each person says “I paid for it 1/5/10 years ago, I deserve to get what I paid for,” everyone is going to be SOL really soon.

By: eff it!

eff it! — Tue, 23 Sep 2014 20:15:06 +0000

Anybody who graduated a 6th grade math class can tell you the world has never had any more, or any less water. In Commiefornia we suffer from a lack of infrustructure and the capacity to hold on to the water (wells/ resevoirs). Yet in a state where the average annual budget approaches 100 billion, our legislators can’t find a measly 7% (7 billion) of that to trim just once to fix the problem. Instead, the voters will be asked to borrow that money, so that we can fix the problem, while spending 11 billion for the repairs…We’re screwed!!!

By: LetitCollapse

LetitCollapse — Mon, 22 Sep 2014 22:21:05 +0000

Water will become the new oil if we have another winter drought. Whenever we fall below average rainfall the solution is always to raise the water rates. Yet I recall when we had 30″ of rain one winter. We were swimming in water. We had so much water we didn’t know what to do with it all. Did the water rates drop? Not a single penny. Supply and demand doesn’t even enter into the equation unless there’s a drought and an alleged shortage. Then the law of economics raises it’s ugly head. Otherwise it’s ignored.

The ruling class will use any crisis to their own advantage. If there’s an opportunity to dig deeper into your wallet, they’ll find a way. They got ya by the short hairs.