Thanks to the wonders of government planning, San Diego County residents have to pay more for water they are not allowed to use. California, as everyone knows, is suffering a drought, so the state legislature mandated water conservation statewide, whether it is needed or not.
San Diego is one place where it isn’t needed, as that county has 99 percent of its normal amount of water. Yet residents are still required by state law to “let their grass die.” The costs of providing water haven’t declined, so the reductions in water usage due to mandatory conservation measures have forced the county water authority to raise its rates to cover those costs.
But it gets worse. San Diego is about to get an overabundance of water that is more costly than ever as a new $1 billion desalination plant is about to open that will increase the county’s water supply by as much as 10 percent. The plant is privately financed, but was built only after the county signed a contract agreeing to buy water from the plant whether it needed it or not. The water authority expects to spend $114 million next year buying water that was previously costing it only $45 million. This has led it to increase in water rates yet again.
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The real solution to California’s water problems is not desalination plants but water pricing. If supplies fall, prices should go up, which might lead private entrepreneurs to develop desalination plants without government promises made at taxpayers’ expense, but more likely would lead to more cost-effective combinations of conservation and increased supplies.
Farmers use 80 percent of California’s water, yet they are exempt from the state-mandated water conservation measures. They are not only exempt, they are legally obligated to use that water or lose the right to use the same amount of water in future years. This use-it-or-lose-it requirement forces farmers to install inefficient irrigation systems and forbids them from selling water to cities and others who may value it more.
A water pricing system would allow farmers to continue to grow crops but still provide plenty of water for cities in drought years. Farmers would have incentives to use water more efficiently, making more available to other users. Since farmers who don’t have water rights under today’s regime could buy water from farmers who do, agricultural production might actually increase and water shortages would be things of the past. Unfortunately, the state politburo legislature has never considered such a radical free-market solution to the state’s periodic water crises.
The consequences of government planning. Odd how government planners keep screwing everything up like this and yet treat any new suggestions with sneers and looks of contempt. As if they could (or did) do better.
Plus the fact that they haven’t built a dam to collect more of the water they do get in the mountains for decades. Even though they have known how much the population and need for water would increase all along. Plus they still waste vast amounts of water trying to save a tiny little fish by flushing the rivers out to sea even though they know it isn’t working and the Delta Smelt pop. continues to decline. All of this and yet Obama went out to the California desert and said in was a desert because of AGW? It’s been a desert for a millennia.
Agriculture uses either 40% of all the water or 80% of the water that doesn’t go out to sea for environmental reasons. Which percentage you quote probably depends on your location on the political spectrum.
Fairly low-wattage commentary in the gallery on this one. Would be interested to know why farmers deserve welfare in the form of irrigation water priced well below market value.
It is not clear to me in this article if San Diego is still getting water from areas that are having a water shortage. If so, why can’t San Diego sell some of this water back? Is San Diego still getting water from drought stricken northern California for instance?
The problem in California and other dry states is that California adopted English common law which doesn’t work for a dry environment. It left original users of water with riparian rights to the water then later users with correlative rights. This is a nightmare of a hodgepodge of different rights to the water which doesn’t work well for selling water to different areas. Attempts to change this are vigorously resisted by users with the various rights and so are very difficult to change. This has always been a problem. On top of this farmers continually want to have the price they pay for water subsidized by general obligation bonds paid for by taxpayers. This is one reason no new dams are being built, the water would be so expensive farmers won’t buy it. So they want taxpayers to subsidize them.
Farmers in the central valley have been mining the water for the last 100 years drilling deeper and deeper wells and resisting any regulation of the mining until now when they realize they are running out of water to mine. If states like Texas can regulate pumping of groundwater why not California?
As far as sending water out of the Delta to preserve small fish, the water is also need to keep leaching salts from the central valley that would otherwise build up, and flush out the San Francisco Bay. Therefore it is debatable how much of this water is actually wasted.
Saving fish such as Salmon may not seem worth the cost but both commercial and non-commercial fishermen have a powerful lobby (besides environmental lobbyists) for what is a very small industry that continues to demand the fisheries be saved at a huge cost of water.
So the problem is very complex with many competing interests and this is one reason it is hard to fix.
Hey Frank
Would be interested to know why farmers deserve welfare in the form of irrigation water priced well below market value.
They don’t. Unfortunately, California seems to be extra chock full of sociopathic political actors only concerned about themselves.
Speaking of sociopaths, found an interesting comment history for msetty down in the local paper. Check it out:
http://napavalleyregister.com/users/profile/msetty/
Basically, while he’s beating the drums for density elsewhere, apparently it’s very important to not densify around where he lives, but leave it as it is. Typical hypocrite.