The article is confused. Market pricing and conservation pricing are related but still different.

I’m in Dallas. We have months long periods almost every year where all our lakes are so overfull, we’re simply dumping excess water down the Trinity River to Houston’s Lake Livingston, which during those periods is typically well over capacity, too.

There’s no reason to conserve during those times. Want to grow a rain forest? Go for it! Conservation pricing is silly then.

Same for New Orleans. All that city has to do is put a straw in the Mississippi. There’s no conceivable situation where conservation is needed there.

Sure, there’s could be other limiters, like capacity to process and generate water. But that’s not a conservation issue.