Although they are wimping out on explicitly raising water prices to reflect “true scarcity,” the California water providers are trying alternative incentive approaches for reducing water consumption. California households are offered a variety of rebates for “green” appliances, including:
* high-efficiency clothes washers;
* high-efficiency toilets;
* weather-based irrigation controllers, or “smart” controllers;
* rotating sprinkler nozzles; and
* synthetic turf (limit one-half acre).
These rebates encourage replacement of old, inefficient durables with these water-conserving devices, but this well-meaning “green” subsidy may actually increase water consumption when people continue to face a low price per gallon of water. People may now do more wash (and hence use more water) because the price per wash has declined. To illustrate this point, consider a car that needs one gallon of gas to drive 1 mile. If the price of gasoline is $3 a gallon, then owners of this gas guzzler will pay $3 to travel 1 mile. If the household is given a vehicle that can travel 30 miles per gallon, the price per mile falls to 10 cents per mile. If this household responds to this large drop in the price per mile by driving much more, then its total gasoline consumption could increase because it purchased a more fuel-efficient vehicle! Although I doubt that this “boomerang” effect is large, this example highlights the consequences of pursuing indirect means of reducing household resource consumption rather than simply using prices.
The water utilities are trying to incentivize people to economize on water and electricity consumption, but they are tying one hand behind their backs by taking the best policy option (higher prices) off the table. My mother-in-law got a chuckle recently when she received a check from her California water provider. This money was a reward for “saving water.” According to her water bill, she had sharply reduced her water consumption relative to her baseline consumption. The water provider concluded this by comparing her recent water consumption with her previous water consumption (perhaps the previous year) over the same time period. What the water authority did not know was that she was in Italy for the entire billing cycle. She had not changed her day to day behavior; because she was out of the country, she was not using PGE water to flush the toilets, water the yard, or take a bath. But the water authority is not Big Brother. It does not know why her water consumption decreased (as determined by her Berkeley water meter falling to zero). Without knowing the true cause of her “conservation,” PGE sent her a check that she would say she doesn’t deserve.
Engineering Solutions to Water Shortage?
Rising water prices would trigger innovation that could take some odd turns. There are new water technologies that can effectively increase the supply of water. Today, water desalinization is quite expensive. Somehow water recycling has been tarred with the name “toilet to the tap”—which is actually an accurate description of the idea.14 Certainly anyone who doesn’t trust engineering techniques would wonder whether the water is contaminated with fecal matter, but those who do trust the technology would be happy to guzzle it. Despite the science behind water recycling, in the late 1990s the Los Angeles mayor scuttled a plan that would have used this technology and mitigated water “shortages” in the city, because he was worried about voter backlash from the grossout factor.
Today engineers continue to try to push support for projects such as the reuse of “gray water.” Light gray water is wastewater from the shower, bath, bathroom sink, and clothes washer. Heavy gray water is wastewater from the kitchen sink and dishwasher. Commercial technologies already exist for processing both light and heavy gray water on-site for nonpotable usage. Although the water produced is not clean enough to drink, such technologies effectively increase our supply of water for other basic uses. This is quite valuable in a world where water will become scarcer.
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17 Comments
Add CommentI really wanted to like this piece, but it relies too much on intellectual shortcuts. The anecdote about the writer's mother-in-law on page 7 is a prime example. The water agency is trying to cut water use by incentivizing saving, but the writer believes this is silly because his MIL got a check for cutting her water usage, when in reality she was overseas and hence her water use fell. Are you really using a single anecdote that relies on an outlying phenomenon (i.e., not everyone can afford to spend a whole month traveling in Italy) to dispute the generally accepted notion that financial incentives can influence human behavior? The same goes for example of how Candy Spelling's giant estate pays less per gallon of water used than the writer does. Is one rich person's anomalous water bill enough to toss out the entire idea of tiered rates? Finally, your view of L.A. is way too westside-centric. You should hang out in some other neighborhoods a bit. The fact that a handful of UCLA students won't venture downtown proves nothing. Oh, and you misspelled the mayor's name.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste/Headwaters.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of your facts are not totally correct, we do get 15 inches of rain not 11 and not everybody wastes water, check out more facts about Securing LA water future here. http://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCurious. So Cal is heading towards the coolest summer on record. July 8 saw the lowest maximum high in 132 years of record keeping in San Diego. Lowest record highs breaking decades old records have occurred continuously this summer on the California coast. Didn't we have record snows this winter back east? And where exactly are the hurricanes the ;ast four years now? Certainly makes on wonder how this stuff is measured.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, everyone talks about how bad LA/OC is but nobody seems to be leaving, apparently even you. That's why the song say's 'We love it!'. After an awesome day today around the pool it should be obvious to the most effete Eastern snob.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, climate is an important factor for attracting people living in LA, but LA has many different characteristics from other region for its charm. It's really interesting that the author discusses the climate issue on an economic view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs one lucky enough to take my family and escape the cesspool of SoCal, I can't imagine that anyone still believes the false claims that LA is some sort or nirvana or desirable in any way. The traffic alone is reason enough to hate the place. I live 65 miles from the nearest freeway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the article is about water. Typical LA attitude that the author thinks that water should be taken from farmers for the lawns of the city. What don't you understand about the fact that WE GROW YOUR FOOD!
Now that LA is just Tijuana Norte, I'm very happy that I don't live in Mexifornia anymore.
What is the reasonable/fair method of calculating the appropriate use of energy/resources by nation states on planet earth??? Should it be based on the resources used per person or per square mile???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow may we support you? Your invention is desperately needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Climate change cant alter the blue skies or access to the beach and mountains, but it will pose four tangible threats: The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, is it just me or how bi-polar is this statement? sure, whatever we do here won't affect the fact that there are stars overhead either.... WTF? worry, but, don't worry? at some point, this "writer" needs to take a stand and quit taking the middle road. its not all about profit. at some point, you have to take a stand - that is, if you believe in something.
the author is talking like a fool, you should pay more attention at how to exist in the earth longer, if you are all gone with the bad climate economy is zero, all things are 000000000
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI take issue with a couple points. One is on the subway where you say it will have 200,000 riders a year. The current subway has 150,000 riders per day not per year, so basically you calculation is off by a factor of 365. That $1,000 taxi ride just went to $3.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, you claim that the skies will become smoggier. As you correctly stated, air pollution has dropped dramatically in the last 30-40 years and continues to drop. With the advent of electric cars and more technological improvements this will likely continue, but you suddenly give a more doomsday scenario because of warmer weather. Also, warm weather is not necessarily a producer of smog. Los Angeles suffers from an inversion layer of cooler air below warmer air. If the cool air does not come in from the coast this inversion does not happen so warmer days are not necessarily the most smoggy. This is often true today as the warmest days are generally not the smoggiest inland necessarily.
Hard to get past the first page of name-dropping and tourist advertising. Kahn and his wife must be up for the next Real Housewives of L.A. Who the hell would read his stupid bool?This guy is just putting lipstick on a pig and calling it beautiful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real issue is...where do these giant metro areas like L.A. and Vegas get their water? The reality is that they steal it from others. By doing so they desire to create a serfdom where the lowly rural inhabitants only exist to serve their city-dwelling masters. The most valuable commodity is fresh water.
The only way to stop the madness is to abandon the growth economy model and concentrate on a sustainable future. Mexifornia (nice one, notslic) is the present model for a failed state, with its $20 billion deficit and plan to again start handing out IOU's for the services it purchases. When it goes down the toilet, it will only end up where all the rest of its sewage does...3 miles out to sea.
"The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water", Matthew Kahn is talking Global Warming. The evidence for GW has evaporated. LA has bigger problems than climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I arrived in SoCal 1972 from the NorthEast, I watched heat-infused sunsets, drank margueritas, ate chile rellenos, and thought I was in heaven (and picked up a BSEE). Having been to all 50 states and many countries, I still think SoCal is heaven. Please consider Shakespeare by the beach or opera at the Dorothy Chandler, cocktails at the Biltmore or dinner at the old train station. Take in the LA Marathon or volunteer at a soup kitchen. What's a little humidity? It's a very elastic and accepting social environment. And, very adaptable. Being rich is not how much you have but how little you need.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHint...the vast majority of the Hispanic kids are NOT ousiders. They were born in greater LA. As were Vietnamese. Chinese, etc.
There are also outright twisted facts about precipitation, recent tremperatures, etc.
Are there no editors at Scientific American to weed out fluffy nonsense articles full of errors?
To me, it's clear that LA is not going to "adapt" so much as how the rest of the world is going to need to change. Different technologies and the use of completely clean power generation (say fusion in the future) could in fact make it very viable
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe'll see
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