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California Fights Drought With Data and Psychology, Yielding 5% Usage Reduction
dcblogs writes with an article about hackers using technology to mitigate the effects of drought. From the article: "California is facing its worst drought in more than 100 years, and one with no end in sight. But it is offering Silicon Valley opportunities. In one project, the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland used customized usage reports .... that [compare] a customer's water use against average use for similar sized households. It uses a form of peer pressure to change behavior. A ... year-long pilot showed a 5% reduction in water usage. The utility said the reporting system could 'go a long way' toward helping the state meet its goal of a reducing water usage by 20% per capita statewide. In other tech related activities, the organizer of a water-tech focused hackathon, Hack the Drought is hoping this effort leads to new water conserving approaches. Overall, water tech supporters are working to bring more investor attention to this market. Imagine H2O, a non-profit, holds annual water tech contests and then helps with access to venture funding. The effort is focused on 'trying to address the market failure in the water sector,' Scott Bryan, the chief operating officer of Imagine H2O."
Stop trying to farm and build huge cities in the desert. When you fuss about not being able to find enough water in the desert I just want to sit in my muddy, humid, rainy state... and watch you die of thirst.
so a group of peope had the brilliant idea of building massive cities and huge agricultural farmlands in a desert, made possible by unsustainable draining of acquifers and importation of water from other states.
and now they have a "drought"?
can't raise enough moisture for a tear over here....
Why not simply lower the water pressure by 10% to curb water usage?
The real use is farming for out-of-state sales. Industry is second. Home use is a grotesquely distant and minor third.
Getting the home user panicked and guilty and whipped up was a knowing, admitted strategy to try to get legislation passed. Mathematically pointless limit discs are part of this.
Save a few percent -- put off the need for growth a year or two.
Ya wanna do something useful? Make it legal for people who develop alternate sources to preen and waste water luxuriously, sans limit discs and with 200 gallon toilet tanks.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
There is merely a shortage of raw materials (H2O) for big agriculture.
Agriculture consumes 80% of the water in California and contributes 5% of the economy. There is sufficient water in California to supply the cities 5 times over.
But before you fly-over states get all self-righteous, think about this the next time you buy fresh salad greens in January.
In Denver we suffered through a drought that lasted a few years. There was a big campaign to get people to reduce their water usage - and it worked! People significantly reduced their water usage - so much that the water board was no longer getting the revenue that it said it needed. So, the rates went up.
Funny how the rates didn't go back down when the drought was over.
Also, not surprisingly, the golf courses got all the water they wanted.
I find residential usage citations vary from 5-13% of total California water usage. Let's say it's 10%. I'm having a hard time figuring out how cutting my usage by, say, a big 25% along with every other California resident is going to solve the problem when that represents maybe 2.5% of total water usage. Don't get me wrong, I see no reason to waste water unnecessarily, but I just don't get all the emphasis on residential usage when it's a drop in the bucket. What am I missing?
Meanwhile billions of gallons of water from California are, essentially, being exported to China.
NB: I apologize if the article is paywalled. The first look is free.
Proverbs 21:19
Do you think everyone should dig up all the grass and use astro turf?
Actually in a lot of New Mexico (can't speak for elsewhere), digging under your grass and "zeroscaping" is fairly popular. Looks good and takes almost no water. Of course, you might need grass out back if you want to play on your Slip-n-Slide.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The CA home user uses about 10% of the water, the other 90% is used by Agriculture and Industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Tell me more about global warming, please.
Sure thing.
They just need to do what they've done in other western "dry" states and price water on consumption. In my state I pay a normal about $30 a month for the first 7000 gallons, which is enough for most moderately sized households internal uses. But the next 7000 gallons cost me double the $30 and the third set of 7000 costs me triple. In the summer my water bill goes from $30 a month to almost $300. This progressive pricing was introduced during our last big drought and water consumption went down 20% almost immediately and has continued to drop every year. Xeroscaping became very popular.
In fact I'm in the process of ripping up several hundred feet of sod to be replaced with native plants.
Water saving measures have drained funds from water taxes that are used to maintain the infrastructure...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...
The smarter towns do what many other (often private) utilities do - have a line item for "fixed costs" and another for "usage". You get a fixed charge of $10-20 for access to the utility, and then a per watt-liter-whatever charge for usage. Even if you use NOTHING, that flat cost comes in every month.
Water billing is largely done on a city/village/town basis. Often, the water comes from a common-source (county 'water agency') which passes on costs to the smaller towns feeding off of it.
Now: if someone along the way mismanages it, that's a different problem.
You have a point, but you're a long way from cutting into actual need.
I live in a country where everybody has access to high quality ground water. Our avarage daily water consumption is per capita less than a third of that of a the US, where you don't have access to high quality water. (our tap water is cleaner than bottled water.)
I was shocked by the disregard for water the first time I visited the US. Just as an example, your toilet bowls are huge lakes of water compared to what I'm used to. Flushing all that water just made me feel guilty.