And you thought rent was high, wait till this trickles down on renters.

And you thought rent was high, wait till this trickles down on renters.

Just great, conserve and get penalized.

Time to hire a Rain Maker.

"This water brought to you by Nestle" -- Gary Kremen. Sheesh. Give me a break.

You get what you vote for, 25 years and counting.............

Peter
San Francisco

Sure glad we're building more houses to protect us from the drought...

I was expecting this. Same thing happened last drought. Save water, use half as much, and your utility wants to increase your bill. It was supposed to be temporary. It wasn't. In the late 1970's, California had a severe drought and the cost of water was increased to cover the amount lost due to conservation efforts. The utilities were supposed to use the money for water system improvements. The increases were supposed to be reversed when the shortage was over.
Neither happened. The water districts then came up with legislation to spend billions of tax dollars for the improvements. Since the improvements were voted down, the utilities never had to make improvements. And the per unit cost never went back to the original value.
So, that's what's going to happen this time as well.
BTW: there has to be a better way to clean out the water mains than "flushing" millions of gallons of water down the drain. Like using robots. Or smart "pigs". Give the problem to a High School Robotics team - they'll come up with a solution.
Maybe this time, they can spend our money on actual improvements.

@Peter Boyd

"You get what you vote for, 25 years and counting"

You voted for a drought?

The increase should not apply to Tier 1. Everybody's problems are solved.

btw - the percentage decrease mandate is idiotic. It penalizes those who were already conserving. It should be a flat gallons-per-person.

So we are threatened with fines by the city, state and the water district if we don't conserve water....and then when we do the Water Company raises our rates.

This situation sits squarely on the head of anyone who was involved in the blocking of dam projects in CA in the 70's.

We needed additional storage then. They blocked the projects. Our population has grown ~2x since then with no increase in storage.

So you have indeed got the state that you voted for.

@Steve: the water district did the same thing in the '87-'95 drought: compute reductions based on a year where people had been asked to reduce, thereby penalizing the water-thrifty. That's why I've ignored the requests for voluntary water reduction. I knew I'd only get burned if I cut back.

@True: we have plenty of water in this state for its residents, and would continue to have plenty of water if agriculture was more sensible in its use. Why should the state build more dams if that water is just going to be used to grow alfalfa for export to China?

@Tom

Because Agriculture is a global industry that contributes ~$1.9B to our economy and employs (direct and indirect) about 3 million people in the state.

@True: why should the state be building more dams to subsidize such a small portion of our economy ($1.9B out of $2,200B that is the CA state economy)?

@Tom

Ag isn't going away. Nor should it.

More storage means that in wet years we'll be able to sock away water to get us through the dry and mitigate negative impact on the economy and food costs, w/o rationing residential use and maintain stream flows allowing river spawning fish (salmon & steelhead etc) stocks to remain robust.

Those dam projects cancelled in the 70's were sorely needed then. With CA population now roughly double it's long past time to revive them.

Increasing the supply will just mean farmers will continue to expand to their water thirsty crops because they would have more water.
The argument that simply building dams will save us is the same argument that printing money will fix out debt. We need to curb "Spending"

If we do not have ag restrictions on use and crop designated areas(no almond groves allowed in desert areas), if we do not have a limit on new sewer permits issued (more residents coming in) we'll simply use up all the reserves and be I the exact same boat we're in now.

@Hydro

I've not asserted that there shouldn't be a push to encourage more efficient water use by agriculture. I don't however think that should come in the form of blanket mandates on what crops should/shouldn't be grown.

All users should be looking for ways to use water more efficiently. The bottom line though is that we didn't have enough storage for our needs 40yrs ago. The doubling of the state population since then has exacerbated that problem.

We had an opportunity to build in a buffer for the dry years and we were misguided in passing it up. It's long past time to rectify that error.