As the drought in California drags on, the State of
California as well as water companies are searching for ways to convince people
to continue to conserve that don’t involve simply raising rates or imposing
draconian fines and penalties. One way to do that may be the implementation of
trading water credits at the consumer level.
Currently, California residents are staring water allocations
in the face based on their 2013 usage. Depending
upon how much they and their neighbors have used in the past on a per capita
basis, they could be looking at having to cut back anywhere from 4% to 36% from
those 2013 numbers. But what if I have
an easier time conserving than my neighbor and reduce my water use by more than
required. Or what if my household in
2013 consisted of me, my wife, and three teenagers who seemed to live half
their life in the shower and who have now gone off to college, meaning my water
use has already fallen off a cliff, even if my tuition bills haven’t. If I cut back a whopping 50% based on my 2013
water usage, all I’m likely to get for it is a lower water bill – maybe. Not even an “Atta boy!” from the water
company or Governor Brown. That’s not a great incentive to do more than I absolutely,
positively have to, and in fact might be a negative incentive to make sure I
don’t do more than required. And for
businesses, forced conservation could result in a decline in revenues and loss
of market share, while not conserving could result in tremendous additional
costs that eat away at already meager profits.
A definite lose – lose.
So what’s the answer? I’m sure there is more than one, but
it could be that allowing individual water consumers to participate in water
credit trading on a limited basis could drive conservation to levels not even
seen in the wildest dreams of Felicia “Lawn Terminator” Marcus. How might that work? Say, with my three teenagers safely off at
school, my wife and I use 5,000 gallons per month less than our
allocation. We should be able to “sell”
the right to use that water to another individual or business. That individual or business could then buy those
5,000 gallons from the water company at the normal rate plus a small fee,
without any additional penalties even if it were above their allocation. I, in turn, would get a credit on my next
bill equal to that small fee paid by the user.
If you really wanted to go all free market, you could even let the level
of that fee float and be determined by what the market would bear.
Granted this is an over-simplification, and many of you will
point out flaws, not the least of which is that it’s a complicated structure
for the water company to keep track of.
So now instead of hearing about the flaws, how about we hear from some
of you on how to make it work. Or let’s hear about your completely out of the
box ideas on how to drive conservation.
There really are no wrong answers, only starting points.
