In California, Stingy Water Users Are Fined in Drought, While the Rich Soak

[groundloop]

Source: NY Times

APPLE VALLEY, Calif. — Outside her two-story tract home in this working-class town, Debbie Alberts, a part-time food service worker, has torn out most of the lawn. She has given up daily showers and cut her family’s water use nearly in half, to just 178 gallons per person each day.

A little more than 100 miles west, a resident of the fashionable Los Angeles hills has been labeled “the Wet Prince of Bel Air” after drinking up more than 30,000 gallons of water each day — the equivalent of 400 toilet flushes each hour with two showers running constantly, with enough water left over to keep the lawn perfectly green.

Only one of them has been fined for excessive water use: Ms. Alberts................

But none of the city’s top water hogs have been fined. Instead, they have been insulated from financial penalties: Because less-affluent residents of Los Angeles have conserved, the city is easily meeting its 16 percent mandated reduction and has had no need to force its wealthiest residents to pare back. (Districts where average use was higher were ordered to cut more.)

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/stingy-water-users-in-fined-in-drought-while-the-rich-soak.html?emc=edit_th_20151122&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=36371920&_r=0

---

Once again, rules don't apply if you're rich or famous.

[BlueJazz]

1. "178 gallons per person each day". I think the article misstated the family's use. That's quiet..

....a bit of water per person per day.

Still, the injustice is disgusting. The law regarding water use should be per person/household. That's the only fair way...

[groundloop]

2. but but but...... swimming pools, water slides, and plush lawns

The article said that there's a new 'house' going up which just got approval for 5 swimming pools. The damned evaporation off those 5 pools is enough to supply water to a couple of middle class homes.

[whathehell]

15. Five swimming pools for one residence?!?

Ridiculous....In a drought, I'd think swimming pools would be given a rather low priority.

[bread_and_roses]

5. USGS says average 80-100 gal day per person

so that does sound high - maybe some mistake there - admit to not reading the article, just curious abt average use ....

[vkkv]

10. That seems high, twice as much as we use to use..

My wife and I together averaged 2,700 - 3,000 gallons per month when we lived on the Monterey peninsula, now we have a well in the Sierra foothills.. veggie garden, etc..

[trillion]

31. what does all that water get used for? I can't imagine my house using that much water - albeit we

run the dish washer and do a few loads of laundry a day. If showers really take less water than baths, there's no way that could be hundreds of gallons.

[hunter]

11. Yards here require require irrigation or they revert to dry dirt.

We let a lot of stuff in our yard die, but it's been painful to see the fruit trees suffer.

Our one almond tree and our three apple trees produced almost nothing this year.

It's entirely obvious that lower and middle class people cut their water use radically, frankly because they need the money, and most wealthy people not at all, some of them even increasing their water use to make up for rain that didn't fall.

I think many wealthy people in the U.S.A. are the scum that rises to the top of a stagnant pond.

The U.S.A. needs a strongly progressive tax system that redistributes the bulk of taxes collected directly to people who are now struggling; by building homes for the homeless, increasing the water and energy efficiency of average homes, medical and dental care for everyone, training and hiring more teachers for rough communities where students require more individual attention from responsible adults... those sorts of things.

[bread_and_roses]

22. Amen ++++ to your last paragraph (n/t)

[diane in sf]

23. The middle class family is either suffering from a massive leak or inaccurate reporting

During the drought in Sf, we got our water use down to 60 gallons a day for two people and that was with a bad old toilet that took 5-7 gallons a flush. And we did have a yard and a washing machine.

[malthaussen]

4. And this surprises whom? n/t

[lonestarnot]

6. Richie rich's parasitic nature keeps sucking.

[AZ Progressive]

7. Its not one monolithic government. Apple Valley may have gotten the shaft in terms of water rights.

Being from the west, I notice bigger cities seem to have more water rights in general. Just look at Tucson, Arizona which is very dry and Phoenix has most of the water rights in Arizona with the city full of green lawns, green golf courses, and canals full of water.

[vkkv]

8. "Tinkle Down Economics "

The poor and middle-class just get peeed on.

[sulphurdunn]

9. We've reached the point

where pointing out inequality before the law between classes of people is pretty much shrugged off or ignored.

[Igel]

16. Part of the problem was a desire to distribute the pain fairly.

If you lived in a district with higher water use your district had a steeper water reduction target.

Apple Valley, 28%. Los Angeles, 16%. That was billed as fair. Hit the heavy users at a collective level, don't just have a common 19% or 20% reduction for every district. District-level targets make sense--local authorities can decide how best to deal with local issues and circumstances. Contracts for water are at the district level, where districts pull together a variety of water sources to meet demand and have different mixes of people connected to a municipal water supply or to wells that draw from regulated (or unregulated) aquifers.

So this particular family suffers under a 28% reduction, billed as "fair" at the time. Meanwhile, those in LA used less on average and had lower targets.

Except there are exceptions and individuals for whom it's not fair. Suddenly we redefine "fair" from district level to individual level. We shift the definitions, we shift the conversation, because we don't like some individual consequences. In small districts there will naturally be fewer extreme outliers; in large districts, there'll be more.

It works the same with averages and distributing consequences. In every case where penalties or perks are distributed to a group there are outliers. To some extent the commons is always abused. It's only a tragedy when it's over-used (or when the few people who overuse it are so well-publicized that it appears that it's being vastly over-used and abused). We're very sensitive to being treated unfairly, as we define it (and insensitive to being treated too generously, since we deserve it). Take a recent bit of research: You're happier making $12/hr if everybody else makes about the same for similar work than you are making $15/hr if others are making $19/hr for the same kind of work. You may be worse off in absolute terms, but you're not worse off in relative terms. ("Envy" is often closely synonymous with "fairness".) Every rule that tries to be fair will have examples of what appears to be unfair. Exceptionless rules, zero-tolerance rules, don't usually work out well. We've tried zero tolerance in all sorts of places in society and invariably they're still unfair to somebody, even if they're billed as perfection itself ahead of time.

The vast majority of Angelenos are conserving water. It's unclear whether or not the "Wet Prince" is, in fact, given this article. Has he reduced water usage by 16%? Can't know. But it's unfair that he's using so much more. Again, we change the goalposts based on exceptions.

This finds allies among those who want to the state to regulate every household. The problem is, that this would also have bad individual consequences for some.

[sulphurdunn]

20. Las Angles is a costal city

with a population of 4 million people. Apple Valley is a desert town with a population of 70 thousand. Suggesting that rich water hogs are no real problem because their numbers are insignificant is interesting and their is some kind of equivalency between the communities is odd. The article was never about communities meeting water reduction goals. It was about water hogs in LA. By your logic very wealthy people will always be outlines whenever communities set conservation goals, and so, if the entire community meets the goals the failure of the wealthy to participate doesn't matter.

Yes, most people consider it rightly unfair when they have to reduce the number of times the can bathe or flush the toilet and someone else can change the water in the swimming pool or water an acre or two of lawn.

No one is happy making $12 an hour if he can't live on it, even if everyone else is making the same $12 and can't live on it either. Of course, most anyone will be unhappy working next to someone doing the same work, with the same level of seniority and experience, for less money. In a just society that would be illegal.

Averages may help explain inequality, but they do not justify it when people are called upon to make sacrifices for the common good. Your argument would work just as well explaining why, with a limited food supply, and the need to ration it, that the poorest tighten their belts while the wealthiest let theirs out a few notches. No sale.

[Sunlei]

12. hopefully those who use over the suggested gals. pay premium price for excessive water use.

[Stuart G]

13. k and r...nt

[whathehell]

14. Wow..This is just wrong..Does California really have a democratic governor in Jerry Brown??

Seriously, what's up with that?

[hunter]

25. Water laws in California are utterly Byzantine...

... and too many powerful people and political entities have both state and federal water rights they will never relinquish without a fight.

Water flows uphill to money and political power, often in a highly subsidized way.

In California's Great Central and Imperial Valleys, and in property developments by wealthy people throughout the state (cough, cough, vineyard development of Paso Robles and Klamath River developers, yes I'm looking at you...), it's very dangerous territory to explore, even for field scientists studying issues just vaguely related to big money water.

One competent Governor is not going to fix that.

[whathehell]

28. Thanks for that information..

I remember water rights as an issue in the movie Chinatown, and that was set back in the 1930's, so it seems it's

been going on for a long time.

[hunter]

29. Hasn't changed much, sadly.

The water politics in my own California community are frequently very, very ugly.

Whenever something turns out right I consider it a Tooth Fairy Bloody Fucking Miracle.

[trillion]

33. Okay, I enjoyed that. Never head of the movie. Guess it's cause I don't watch TV except on

presidential elections and other national disasters - like 911.

[Enthusiast]

17. That sounds fair.

[SunSeeker]

18. Apple Valley is a desert town that automatically asseses fines.

My mother-in-law's home is there and got hit with a $200 fines several months in a row. When we finally found out we reset her sprinklers, which were set way too high. The fine is based on your gallons used and automatically appears on your water bill whether you are rich or poor.

I thought all CA water agencies were like that. I guess the "Los Angeles hills" area where the rich water hog guy lives is not like that. I think since he is in LA his property is serviced by LA Department of Water and Power. LA DWP has had a lot of issues over the years. I imagine if LA DWP is not fining rich people it is not fining poor people either.

[Z_California]

19. Meanwhile, in the Palm Springs area

golf courses suck up 46 million gallons of water per day. Weird that they don't target that, isn't it?

[trillion]

34. Wow, and yeah they should be targeted.

[valerief]

21. Laws are made to protect the interests of the wealthy. nt

[greiner3]

27. Love that pic and can I borrow it?

[valerief]

30. Sure, take it. nt

[diane in sf]

24. The middle class family is either suffering from a massive leak or inaccurate reporting

During the last drought in Sf, we got our water use down to 60 gallons a day for two people and that was with a bad old toilet that took 5-7 gallons a flush. And we did have a yard and a washing machine.

[shanti]

26. in my small city

i see the water dept. trucks driving around all the time, monitoring usage. in sacramento county, we can only water once a week now. i've not watered my lawn in at least 6 months, so i had to call the gardener and tell him to stop coming anymore, because my tiny lawn was just dirt. we had some rain in the last 30 days, and now a little grass is sprouting up, still not enough to mow though. the gardeners in cali are hurting, you know it!

[trillion]

32. Glad this article made the NYTimes. Time to protest the rich.

that this made the NY Time means times have chanced. I thank Occupy. They spread the term 1% and finally got everyone to understand exactly who the problem are.

[aggiesal]

35. It's called ...

[font color=red size=20]AFFLUENZA[/font]

And I'm getting sick of it.