California Drought and Bad Math

[RA1]

The last several times that I visited CA (long before the current water problem) I had to ask for a glass of water with food, the shower heads were ultra low flow as were the toilets. MsGuy is absolutely correct. No one wants to deal with the problem with anything more than a non-effective band aid. Pricing and competition works.

Best regards,

RA1

[MsAnn]

Is there some reason to think Moonbeam has or had changed? Only in CA.....

Best regards,

RA1

I don't care what anybody says... that's funny.

[MsAnn]

Charlie, most of the problems you describe come from trying to address the water shortage through allocation rationing rather than price rationing.

The water board does not exist, nor will one ever exist, that can efficiently allocate water between restaurants, front lawns, olive orchards, alfalfa farms, golf courses and bathrooms. For 'efficiently' above, please read 'with the least possible pain and damage'.

Exacerbating the problem is that Cali, and the rest of the desert West, has stalwartly refused to (gradually) introduce price rationing for decades, all the while committing tens of billions of dollars to development predicated on plentiful, cheap water. A few years back I read up on this problem just out of curiosity. Any number of studies have shown that there is plenty of water out west if only it were efficiently employed on sane uses.

Enormous amounts of water is used in agriculture on low value added, water hungry crops using obsolete irrigation methods. Hugh amounts are wasted for absurd urban purposes. Value priced water will cure both those sets of problems.

You can have cheap water or you can have plentiful water (for any useful purpose) but you can not have both cheap & plentiful water. Each year that you guys refuse to acknowledge this truth only makes the situation worse.

Or, I guess you could choose to have some folks in Sacramento try to figure out how to allocate water between hotels in Palm Springs and avocados in Central Valley. Good luck with that.

OR.... they could just pray for snow, and all of this would just be a mute point. And then all the good folks out in Cali could go back to doing what they do best. wasting their most precious commodity.