Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
March 4, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Special to the Press-Enterprise: Riverside homeowners install yard to beat drought
The Press-Enterprise
Commentary: As Reservoirs Fall, Prices Should Rise
The Huffington Post
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Special to the Press-Enterprise: Riverside homeowners install yard to beat drought
The Press-Enterprise- 3/3/09
Indian Hills residents Buck and Yvonne Hemenway will be going to extremes at their ninth annual open gardens and plant sale March 28-29 in
The couple will teach visitors how to change their landscaping to one that tolerates drought. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed a drought emergency in February, and
For years, the Hemenways have opened their backyard, full of agave, cactus and succulents, to visitors to show how attractive water-saving plants can be. They recently removed the lawn and nondrought tolerant plants in their front yard, replacing them with plantings that will require little water to survive. They expect the new landscaping to cut their water bill by 75 percent.
"With the Perris Municipal Water District and other California water districts talking about switching to a rated water system, where the more water you use, the more you pay, people are going to be hit hard in their pocketbooks," said Buck Hemenway, owner of the Prickly Palace nursery.
Hemenway said homeowners can change the landscaping in their front yards as a do-it-yourself project for $2,000, including a truckload of decomposed granite, which took the place of his lawn.
"I had a very large (plant) bed that had no sprinklers, so I bought a lot of cactus to throw in there, and I got hooked," Marino said. His backyard is planted with succulents and cactus, but his front yard still has a small grass play area.
For those who love to engage in neighborly turf wars, Hemenway said there is no reason not to have a small portion of lawn in the backyard for children and dogs. There are drought-tolerant
"They are not quite as green looking as what we're used to, but drought-tolerant landscaping gives the homeowner a chance to have a more interesting, more creative look for their yards and gardens," he said.
The Hemenways say they used at least 70 kinds of plants for their front yard, including South American cactus and aloes that will grow 30 feet tall. Rock and boulders weighing up to a ton were brought in for visual interest.
The couple, using plants from both the Old World and the
Desert landscapes make sense in
"We have to remember we're not the tropics. Californians landscape with palm trees and hibiscus, subtropical plants, and we're not that," he said.
"In 10 years the change to the
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_W_wplants04.4853ff1.html
Commentary: As Reservoirs Fall, Prices Should Rise
The Huffington Post – 3/3/09
By: Robert Stavins
(Robert Stavins is the Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program)
Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency and warned of possible mandatory water rationing as the state struggled through its third consecutive year of drought. This well-intentioned response to the latest water crisis should not come as a surprise.
Whenever prolonged droughts take place -- anywhere in the
The droughts eventually pass, and when they do, water users go back to business as usual, treating water as if it were not a scarce resource. Water conservation efforts become a thing of the past, until the next drought, until the next unnecessary crisis. Isn't there a better way?
The answer is yes -- if we are willing to treat water as a valuable resource and price it accordingly, so that people have incentives to use the resource wisely, especially in times of need.
In 1776, Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations the apparent paradox that water is absolutely vital to human existence but is sold for no more than a pittance. More than two hundred years later, I can refill an eight-ounce glass 2,500 times with water from the tap for less than the cost of a single can of soda. Under these conditions, it is hardly surprising that we have so little incentive to conserve our scarce water supplies.
Throughout the
Fifty years of economic analyses have demonstrated that water demand is responsive to price changes, both in the short term, as individuals and firms respond by making do with less, and in the long term, as they adopt more efficient devices in the home and workplace. For example, when
But prices are typically set well below the social costs of the water supplies, since historical average costs are employed, rather than true additional (marginal) costs of new supplies. Although water scarcity typically develops gradually across seasons of low rainfall and low accumulations of snow pack, pronounced droughts are usually felt in the summer months of greatest demand. The economically sensible approach is to charge more at these times, but such "seasonal pricing" is practiced by less than 2% of utilities across the country.
A reasonable objection to jacking up the price of water is that it would hurt the poor. But we can take a page from the play book of electric utilities who subsidize the first kilowatt-hours of electricity use with very low "life-line rates." Indeed, the first increment of water use can be made available free of charge. What matters is that the right incentives are provided for higher levels of usage.
Other innovative possibilities exist. For instance, we have learned that the generation of electricity can be separated from its transmission and distribution -- and that generation is a competitive business. Similarly, the supply of water to municipal systems can also be made more competitive, and hence more efficient. The Western states have been the first to innovate with water markets because of their greater scarcity concerns.
An example much in the news in recent years in
Droughts, like so many public policy dilemmas, present both challenges and opportunities. Inevitably, citizens and businesses do their best to cope with mandatory restrictions. And with equal inevitability, once droughts have passed and the restraints are lifted, they return to their previous habits of water use and abuse.
The next water "crisis" when it comes will therefore present an opportunity to refuse to return to business as usual when the drought has passed. Instead, the affected areas can introduce progressive water pricing reforms that will send the correct signals to individuals and businesses about the true value of this precious resource. In my next post, I will focus on some specifics of implementing better water pricing, drawing on work I've done with Professor Sheila Olmstead of Yale University.#
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-stavins/as-reservoirs-fall-prices_b_171542.html
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