Western Drought Grinds On - LA Times

[hatrack]

LAS VEGAS — After five years of distressingly low rain and snowfall, a drought is hammering the West harder than ever, causing multibillion-dollar economic losses and prompting unprecedented measures in many states to cope with less water. With the start of winter, little optimism exists that the coming months will fix the problems. Weather forecasts are equivocal.

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The drought is still raging in many places,' said John W. Keys III, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that operates the key dams in Western states. 'Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Montana are in really bad shape. The Missouri River is at historic lows. The Platte River and Rio Grande are way down.'

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Water agencies are no longer betting on Mother Nature: The Southern Nevada Water Authority approved a plan Thursday to extend its intake pipes 50 feet deeper into Lake Mead to prevent sucking air if lake levels continue to drop. The situation in Arizona, where the state pays out $1 million a month for homeowners not to grow grass, is just as bad. 'We have depleted our reservoirs,' said Herb Guenther, director of the state's Department of Water Resources. 'We still have groundwater basins to fall back on.'

Across the Continental Divide, the conditions are similarly bad. Elephant Butte Dam, the largest reservoir on the Rio Grande and the main supply of water for New Mexico, is holding just 10% of its capacity, and managers have curtailed deliveries."

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[Champion Jack]

1. Here in L.A. the DWP just announced

that water rates will go up 18% next year.

[NJCher]

2. 18% !!??!

That's outrageous. I read the article. It is a complex situation with all kinds of ramifications.

The lawn, for one thing, is gonna' have to go. So will any kind of irrigation other than drip.

This is bad news for all of us.

Here in the east, we are experiencing almost too much water. Parts of NJ were flooded last week. I had to build a $2000 drain around a 12' tall terraced area because the constant rains were causing too much pressure on the wall.

It's worked great but...$2000?


Cher

[Champion Jack]

3. My water and power bills average

about $250 to $300.00 a month all ready, and I have cut WAY down on watering. This is really going to sting.
On another note, I just got back from the east coast, where I looked at 93 acres with 2 creeks and an artesian spring. Soon I will bid Buh-by to Kalifornia.

[Roy G Biv]

4. I don't think it's outrageous.

In fact, 18% might actually be too small of an increase.

The only rational price for water is the point where supply and demand are equal to each other.

The only reason water shortages exist anywhere in the USA is because the government keeps the price artificially low.

Letting the price rise will do two things.

First, the people who use water will voluntarily reduce their consumption of water. Thus, there's no need to ask people to "Please conserve your use of water. Please! Please! Pretty please!" And, there's no need to have the totalitarian policies of making it illegal to water your lawn, wash your car, and fill your swimming pool - policies which encourage people to spy on their neigbors like in a George Orwell-type scenario. And there's no need to make 3.5 gallon toilet tanks illegal. The higher price is the ONLY thing that's necssary to get people to conserve.

Secondly, the higher price will enable and encourage water suppliers to build desalination plants, and a system of pipes to transport the water to wherever it's needed. The cost of desalination is less than a penny a gallon.

If the price of water was at the correct point, people could use as much water as they wanted, whenever they wanted, and there would never be any shortages.

[GAspnes]

5. ummmm .. correction

An acre-foot of water is 325,851 gallons. At your price (let's say, a penny a gallon), an acre-foot of water is $3,258.51. According to http://www.coastal.ca.gov/desalrpt/dchap1.html, an acre-foot of groundwater costs $200.

Hardly economical.

[Roy G Biv]

6. correction on your correction

I said desalination costs LESS than a penny a gallon.

If there's enough groundwater available, then there's no need to use desalination.

Yes, $200 for groundwater is better than $3,258.51 for desalinized water - but only if the groundwater is actually available.

$3,258.51 for desalinized water is better than $200 dollars for zero groundwater - because some water is better than no water.

See? I'm only in favor of desalintion when other sources aren't sufficient.

[GAspnes]

7. check the chart at that URL

desalination isn't economical under any circumstances that I can see. It's roughly 10X as costly as other water sources.

Not to mention that, as a side-effect, running a desalination plant requires massive amounts of energy and we all know how the long-term energy picture is looking.

Perhaps a better solution would be to legislate water-wasting activities out of existence (rice-growing in the Imperial Valley, lawn-watering in Las Vegas) and reduce demand in a controlled fashion. I don't see the advantage to letting a desal corporation make obscene profits selling water into an inelastic market.

[sandlapper]

8. Then there is always the alternative --

anyone who arrived in Kalifoomia after 1980 can pack up and move East.

[Roy G Biv]

9. The market for water is not "inelastic."

The market for water is actually very elastic.

The only reason that people waste water by watering their lawns and growing crops in the desert is because the government keeps the price too low.

Higher water prices = automatic voluntary conservation.

But you prefer government controls and government rationing.

Just curious, do you also prefer government rationing for food and clothing, too? And if not, why not?

[GAspnes]

11. Ooooooo....a free marketer

Perhaps the idea of government controls bothers you?

Anything that is essential, and a natural monopoly (water, power, communications, food, housing) is already regulated, for the very reason that the Free Market cannot be trusted to be compassionate.

Higher water prices means people dying of thirst. Is that your solution?

[Roy G Biv]

12. Oy vey!

I never said that the price of water should be so high that it would cause people to die of thirst.

I did say that it should be high enough so that people won't waste water by excessively watering their lawns when water is scarce.

You mentioned food in your post. OK. Then let's try a little thought experiment. Let's imagine that the government passed a law forcing all supermarkets and grocery stores to lower their prices by 25%. Then do you know what would happen? There would be shortages of food, and people would starve to death.

And then I would argue in favor of getting rid of the price controls. And you would argue in favor of keeping them.

You also mentioned housing. Well, just about every economist, even the most liberal ones, agree that, in the long run, rent control causes a decrease in the available supply of affordable housing. In New York City, rent control has caused landlords to abandon huge numbers of apartment units.

If price controls are your definition of "compassion," then it seems that you are more interested in the intentions of a policy, than in the actual real world results.

[GAspnes]

14. let's check your facts

I never said that the price of water should be so high that it would cause people to die of thirst.

You suggested that desalination was a viable economic solution. At $3,000/acre-foot, who can afford the water you would be selling?

I did say that it should be high enough so that people won't waste water by excessively watering their lawns when water is scarce.

Who decides what is 'excessively', and how do you differentiate between someone making $30K a year who has no lawn and cannot pay $3K/acre-foot, and someone making $3,000K a year who can pay whatever water costs?

By the way -- food is already held artifically low by government price supports and agricultural policy. We laud our "lowest cost of food in the world." Wanna raise that price of rice, wheat, beef, lettuce? How many will starve if the price of food rises?

You have *no* idea of economic realities. You're proposing a 'free market' which would make people starve to death while living on the street. I don't think that's what the national discussion during the '30s was about. We decided then that NO american should die of thirst, or hunger, and it was the government's job to make sure of that.

So -- in favor of killing Americans so that the price of water can be 'fair', or not?

[Roy G Biv]

15. Who would die of thirst?

I said desalination costs less than a penny a gallon.

How many gallons of water does a person need to drink in a day?

I can assure you that the U.S. does NOT have any price controls on food. If we did, then the farmers who grew those crops would stop growing them, and would switch to growing crops that did not have price controls.

You can read any Economics 101 textbook, written by any economist, of any political persusasion, and they will all say the same thing about price controls.

Her's a nifty little online intro to Economics 101:

http://www.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/eco212i/lectures/5es/5es.htm

[Roy G Biv]

16. Also

The U.S. government does pay farmers subsidies to NOT grow certain crops. That does reduce the supply of those crops, which drives the price up. But that's different from a price control. A price control is where it is ILLEGAL to charge above a certain price, and the U.S. does NOT have price controls on food. (Actually, some states have MINIMUM prices on milk, where it's illegal to charge LESS than a certain price per gallon. But this causes surpluses, not shortages.)

You had said:

"Who decides what is 'excessively', and how do you differentiate between someone making $30K a year who has no lawn and cannot pay $3K/acre-foot, and someone making $3,000K a year who can pay whatever water costs?"

That decision is made the same way that the decision for all other purchases is made: each individual chooses how he wants to spend his own money. Life involves choices, and all of these choices involve tradeoffs.

[Boomer]

10. Are they serious?

>> The situation in Arizona, where the state pays out $1 million a month for homeowners not to grow grass, is just as bad. <<

People who chose to live in the desert have to be paid NOT to grow a water-hogging decorative plant? That's insane. You should have to pay taxes to the state to GROW a lawn.

--Boomer

[Roy G Biv]

13. Of course it's insane.

Anytime the government keeps the price of something too low, the results will always be screwed up.

You suggested charging higher taxes for using water, but I would prefer charging higher prices for the water itself. The more water you use, the more you pay. Charging higher taxes doesn't address the problem of water shortages, but charging higher prices for water does.