> it is an poor governance problem

No, it's a poor pricing problem.

The price of water should be directly related to the cost of delivery and supply. Unfortunately, virtually everywhere, you are merely charged for the cost of delivery. If we tie the price of water to something like rainfall, we'll all be much better off. Inefficient use of water will disappear very quickly.

>> it is an poor governance problem

>No, it's a poor pricing problem.

And who do you think sets pricing regulations?

California prevents farmers from selling water across county lines and more. Farmers would certainly choose to sell the water if they could.

As for desalting the ocean, perhaps building aquifers to retain the run off from rains would be a better solution. They did a great deal of work to send all that water into the ocean, its time they redirected it to where it can stored and used as necessary.

We do that. They're called, "Reservoirs": Consider the Colorado River, where rain and snow runoff from mountains is diverted from that river and used for such things as agriculture. It's used so heavily, that the river does not run to the ocean any more and the resevoirs we've been using the river to fill up are at historical lows. So that's tapped out.

If you're thinking of using the runoff from local rains, consider that California is in a drought. Rainwater isn't going to be all that dependable. There are things called, "Aquifers" - the water table below ground. Rainwater is used to fill this up, and - well: those are also at historical lows because of wells.

Much of the rain that falls is actually evaporated up again, it doesn't run into the ocean.

So, we're still left with a problem of populations that don't have an adequate and cheap water supply. Uh oh.

Various entities in CA have spent a lot of money to prevent flooding, and in doing so they have made very effective systems that shunt freshwater right into the ocean. Because the water is very efficiently moved from streets to drains to cement rivers to whatever it doesn't get a chance to sink in, and that means that a lot of water is "wasted".

CA might be in a drought, but it still does get rainfall. Drought != no rain at all, it means less rain than usual.

If you don't get much rain, you have to do everything you can to prevent runoff. There's not much of that in CA and so there are problems. It's partially a drought, and partially bad water management that have caused the problems.

Agree wholeheartedly. To put concerns about pricing the poor out of their water, I'd agree with a subsidised rate for the first N gallons consumed per household each month. The subsidy could be made revenue neutral by funding it out of a tax on the un-subsidised portion.

Why isn't the price of water tied to the price of supply?

Thats not the way water rights work at all - eg, farmers get a percentage of the water from a given stream.

Check out SSC[1] for an in depth review of water policy in CA.

1. http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...

because water is a public utility and heavily regulated, and for good reason - you want to guarantee that everyone who needs water gets it, even if you are poor and unpopular. Of course that's vulnerable to pressure groups, in this case the agricultural sector who want lots of cheap water. Then again if it was all run privately with no regulation, all the water would probably be put in bottles and sold at 1000x the price.

Your comment shows an ignorance of how prices work. Companies cannot arbitrarily set whatever price they want.

No, but they will set the highest price the market can bear. It appears people are willing to buy bottled water at around 1000x the price per unit volume compare to tap water, so given a free reign companies would sell as much water as bottled water at that price as they could.

This is actually happening in California with Nestle's bottling operation where the oversight of their water use has been very lax.

You are being manipulated by a PR campaign. Nestle draws ~2000 acre-feet a year. It's a rounding error. Same thing with shutting off the water while you brush your teeth, restaurants not serving water until you ask for it, and so on.

The uses that matter are agriculture, agriculture, agriculture, industrial (e.g. power plant cooling towers), and far off in the distance outdoor domestic / commercial use (pools and lawns). (Also, if you consider it a 'use' - not draining every river in the state, but rather allowing some of them to continue to be rivers. This is the so-called environmental use.)

When you bring up red herrings about poor people dying of thirst because rich techies are buying bottled water from nefarious companies stealing public water, you are being a patsy of BigAg.

Sure they can, it's just that in a healthy competitive market no one will buy what they're selling if they price themselves out. In an unhealthy market, however...

I think they are. The problem is that that price has no relation to the demand.

One concern is to stop monopoly water suppliers from overcharging. So prices have to only cover the costs of delivering the water.

> Inefficient use of water will disappear very quickly

Yeah, I'm sure that will have no public health consequences whatsoever.

What exactly are you dancing about here? Are you seriously trying to imply that people won't wash their hands because they're worried about the cost?

If the water-shortage is already so bad that it could cause prices like that for individuals, then you've already got a problem that'll cause health issues.

Water is subsidized because it is considered a human right.

The entities getting (implicitly) subsidized are giant agribusinesses, not poor people. In fact, in the article it says that the residents of San Diego are going to see $5-$7 a month increases for the next 30 years to pay for this desalination plant.

Having an annual statewide wholesale auction for water rights would decrease the cost to urban end users, not increase them. But some people are so reflexively opposed to market based solutions that they attack them even when the net result is improvement for the very people they claim to care about.

By saying people are reflexively against market solutions you're assuming they have not put any thought into this. I don't think it is that simple.

Yes... and? Subsidizing water for individuals who need to drink and wash? Sure, I can get behind that.

However, that's totally different than granting similar rights and subsidies to acres of cash-crops and chemical-refineries!

I assume it is more complex than appears on the surface. Which crops and processes deserve access to cheaper water? How much water will that save? How much will the price of goods go up as a result? What customers will stop buying as a result? How will farmers react? Should the government try not to bite the hand that feeds its people?

I haven't read any farm bills or anything about water data but that's what I would do first if I wanted to understand more.

> Which crops and processes deserve access to cheaper water?

If you're the one trying to champion "water as a human right", then I think it's only fair to ask you where you would draw the lines. What demarcates personal use and commercial use? How many gallons can someone use for their outdoor "washing" pool before you step in and say that they're abusing the system?

> How much will the price of goods go up as a result?

I don't know, but we have a distributed algorithm for solving it called "capitalism". Like any algorithm, garbage-in makes for garbage-out, and tuning it is a major pain the ass. One of the important inputs is whatever cost on shared-resources (or externalities) imposed by the government.

Yeah, I do not disagree. I think water regulation should be an open topic. Share data and hold public forums so more parties can work towards a reasonable system that is fair to both businesses and people.

Economic calculation problem