Central Texas is having its worst drought in 50 years, and since May we have been limited to twice-a-week lawn watering. With things getting worse, on August 24 the limit goes to once per week. I’ll abide by the limit, but I’ll set my sprinklers to run longer each session than during the twice-a-week watering. I’m sure I’m not alone; and thus these private actions will partly undo the restrictions.
We all take water out of a common pool, but the water is not a public good — each of us uses it up. The local paper is trying to solve the shortage by publishing the names of the biggest residential users and shaming them. I doubt this will help. The problem could readily be solved by pricing the water sufficiently high to ensure that we get through the drought with water to spare. Indeed, that’s what a free market would do. Unfortunately, Austin hasn’t seen fit to mimic free-market pricing of this increasingly scarce resource.
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Oh, good solution – only the rich can have water. That’s rationing according to wealth – just like you probably think we should do with health care, education, etc. Shoud we do that with electric power, too? And with heating oil?
I worry about increasing the price of water to the poor. What about giving every house a certain allocation of water at the current rate (enough to wash clothes, shower, food, & drink) and then raise the rates way high on amounts consumed above that.
waiddaminute- if you increase the price of H2O signifigantly, this will just shift a cost burden onto the poor- better public policy is to enforce H2O restriction for all
Austin’s not alone. Water rarely reflects its scarcity or abundence. At best the price of water reflects the cost of the underlying infrastructure. If you figure out a way to price water accurately you might deserve a nobel.
This comment is sort of peripherally related to the economic point you’re making, but Americans are way too obsessed with their lawns anyway. I’m also in a Southern state, and I have to say that I’m disturbed by how profligate folks are with watering their lawns.
Wasting water on lawns is obscene. The pricing of water should be on usage, and quickly get more expensive the more you use past a low, basic level.
I hope you run your sprinklers at night, when evaporation is minimized.
Concur.
Assuming prices could be adjusted dynamically and didn’t require a bureaucratic maze of approvals, how do you adjust them?
Uniformly, as with a commodity like gasoline? You pay the same for a gallon of gas that gets you somewhere essential like work as you do for an elective vacation. But that’s not how water bills (currently) work.
Or do you increase the steepness of the curve, punishing only the high end users – which may be a self-indulgent single gardener or simply a family that’s not a fan of birth control?
- Fellow Austin Resident