Red Clay Citizen

Charlotte Observer's Water Heads

Here's the Charlotte Observer on their water woes (since dried up):

First things first. It's encouraging news that drought conditions have improved enough in the Catawba River Valley for an advisory group to OK limited lawn irrigation. Presumably, that decision reflected hard and fast data, not pressure by landscapers or a desire to refill depleted utility budgets.

Yet we can't help but fear the region may quickly find itself right back where it started this year, water-wise: Far short of normal rainfall, water supplies shrinking and facing even more dire restrictions on water use.

There's also this: The lesson we've learned in the past year about water conservation ought to be permanent, not fleeting. Holding tight to water restrictions would reinforce the fact we need to learn to do with less, not return to old habits.

Again and again, journalists create false dichotomies. The Observer's is: either we implement draconian conservation "water restrictions" to "learn to do with less" - or - we overconsume and let the well dry up. I seem to remember offering a solution that would break this false dichotomy: charge prices relative to scarcity. Hello? Anyone awake over there? Even Raleigh's gonna start tiered water rates - which, while imperfect, is better than subsidizing overconsumption then writing people tickets after the fact.
-Max Borders

Getting Government out of Water

Great piece by a former EPA administrator on why the government shouldn't be in the water business and businesses should.
-Max Borders

Climate Change? Ah, Water Markets

Read Jonathan Adler's paper on water marketing as an adaptive tool for changes in climates like, oh, I don't know, droughts?
-Max Borders

Common Sense Rains on Raleigh

After weathering restrictions, radical conservation proposals and other nonsense, Raleigh adopts a sensible water policy. Not perfect, but it'll probably work:

The Raleigh City Council has now agreed to a tiered-rate water-pricing structure, in which those who used more than the normal amount of water for an individual, family or business would pay more. It's meant to encourage conservation. So that's good. What's unfortunate is that the city won't be able to switch over to that system until the spring of 2009, because the necessary billing software isn't in place.

Per unit H2O pricing-relative-to-scarcity would probably be better, but we'll take what common sense we can get from government.
-Max Borders

Dome: Dry Idea Number 5?

Maybe I missed Dome's post on how water pricing will help cure us of overconsumption.

But interestingly, while Ryan Teague Beckwith touts Seattle as a city of H2O transparency (no pun), as far as I know he's failed to mention that Seattle, among a number of more arid cities in the arid Western U.S., uses full cost pricing!

Seriously, why is there almost a universal hostility to charging people for what they consume? If you're worried about poor people having water to flush, brush and make Kool-Aid, then charge full cost after X units. But to keep rich people from watering 40 acres and corporations from freeriding off the population, charge people based on scarcity. You'll see people turning into creative conservationists left and right.
-Max Borders

Cess Pool of Ideas

Town planners are central planners. The ideas just keep getting stupider (and more intrusive).
-Max Borders

Dear Water Nazis and "Conservationists"...

...I'd like for "officials" and the editorialists over at the N&O to think back, back, back to a time when you were in highschool and they made you take economics. It was probably 11th grade or so. Now, remember those supply and demand curves? I know. You're writers. Not economists. But just try to remember. Good, see whether that demand curve slopes down and hits the supply curve? Somewhere in there is an equilibrium point on which to base a price. How about that? Pretty simple huh? Okay, so you if you follow that little scheme you will conserve water. If you're worried about it being "regressive" give every home a subsidized amount reasonable for a family of four to shower twice a day plus enough for coffee and icecubes, then price the rest relative to scarcity. It's not rocket science. Let's stop trying to make this a crazy conservationist enviromental issue and just use common sense economics.
-Max Borders

Tiered Water Rates in Raleigh? Hallelujah

Sometimes you holler till you're blue in the face. Then, every once in a while, someone listens. OK, so it's not a "unique idea." (HT: Hayes) But:

According to UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Government, rate structures are used to encourage conservation in about one in five water systems in the state -- including two in the Triangle. Water-rich Cary has relied on tiered water rates since 1999. Its leaders credit the rates with reducing the fast-growing town's water consumption per person.

Why is it such a stretch for so-called "conservationists" to use the best method of conservation ever devised? (See also other issues of scarcity, environment and conservation here.)
-Max Borders