Residential and city use is a) a drop in the proverbial bucket (20% of California water use) and b) comes from a completely different system. For the most part it's drawn from snowmelt in the Sierras, and even when drought gets pretty bad it's been sustainable. Fingers crossed it will stay that way.
Really it's farmers who should pay for water, and hard limits on aquifer withdrawal. They'll hate it but there's not enough to go around and I don't see an alternative.
Also worth pointing out that California is an enormous place and what applies to the Central and Imperial Valleys doesn't apply to, say, the San Joaquin Delta. There's no good reason to stop growing rice in the latter, because the acre-feet of water which go into doing so are just going to flow directly into the Bay otherwise.
Maybe we could pay for more of it to be diverted into the Central Valley if there was some sort of profit in it. Water auctions, say.
That’s years worth of baths for most people - average cost per bath at 0.25 cents per gallon would be 7 cents.
Realize farmers use water measured in ACRE feet
That's the cost of living in a desert.
In my defense, it's common "greengrocerese" to list a price that way. If limes are shown as "0.10¢ ea." on a handwritten card, you're not getting ten for a penny.
I still think taxing residential water is irrelevant, and that the difference between buying water at auction from the state and paying a tax for that water to the state, is that auction is better because price discovery tends to be.
This highlight the large water uses (usually free in the millions of gallons).
If you aren't willing to say a gallon of water is worth a quarter of a penny - then we can usually stop talking about any supposed shortages. Retail / urban water use (ie, a bottle of water at the store, often 1/8th of a gallon - this tax is irrelevant obviously) already is wildly higher in cost than the "free" groundwater and river water folks are using.
Pop is 90% to 99% water and far worse for people than just water even the diet types.
I'm a big bottled water drinker, but if I had to make an argument for why bottled water makes less sense than pop/soda, that would be it.
20L /toilet flush, x 3
30L /shower,
5L /dishes,
20L /laundry x ~ 0.2
1L for drinking
What in the world would I need to drain another 40L / 8 gallons into?
I replaced it with a washer that uses less than a third of that. The kids would generate a 5 loads of laundry per week, and my suggestions that we use less were... not well received.
The other fixtures here are very nicely maintained, a great landlord, but the plumbing is 40 years old. While it's no longer possible to purchase a toliet that uses four gallons per flush, they are still everywhere.
Legislation? Tighter ordinances? Good luck getting those passed, or enforced. And however necessary, the replacement of antiquated plumbing appliances amount to extremely regressive taxation: those with the least money would bear most of the financial cost.
*It's pointed out a few times that only a few of the plants are local native species, many aren't North American at all.
For example, what if water wasn't billed at a flat rate? Each building could have an allotment based on size and expected occupancy. One rate within that amount, and a higher rate for each unit over it. Calculate the level such that essential water usage is affordable and watering a large lawn becomes a luxury.
I doubt that exact plan is workable without further elaboration; the law of unintended consequences is powerful. But the point is that "we should have more sustainable landscaping" doesn't necessarily equate directly to "ban all grass".
Someone buying 8 oz at the airport won’t notice.
Water is scarce because in a lot of cases water is free