The price of gasoline is irrelevant as model for water for many reasons.

The great majority of the consumption of gasoline comes from the irreplacable uses in commuting to work, and transportation of goods. Very little can be said to be discretionary. If one chose to not use gasoline to go to work, for he most part he would be fired and the decision would be more costly than maintaining the status quo.

With water, only a small fraction is actually neccessity use, much like electricity. Plenty of people set their thermostats on 80 to save 100-200 a month. This is because a/c is more luxury than anything else.

Neccessity water is having enough to drink, enough to bathe and enough for sanitary purposes. Faced with a $150-300 water bill, you would be amazed at how quickly people would stop hand washing dishes, showering multiple times a day, leaving faucets running while shaving and running half full top loading washers. And, that is only a small fraction of the waste. The biggest waste come from outdoor uses. Most people are not going to water their acre plot if it means paying 500 a month. The few tha do will not add up to a hill of beans. For every household using 400,000 gallons a month, there are 100,000 or more using the average 12,000. In the end that averages to an extra 3 gallons per household. The answer does not lie in class warfare, but in the average user.

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wgfupus2w.htm

Just some food for thought.

I can see that you do not have a background in science.

The piddly amount of water that humans use for all purposes is less than a drop in the bucket when compared to the seas. Imagine if your appetite was a grain of rice a day, how long would a silo full last?

Besides, the ocean is not de-salinated, water from the ocean is. That means that the salt that is returned to the ocean is returned in the form of slightly enriched water, while pure water is then available for use.

Further, all water eventually returns to the oceans, so nothing is actually consumed. Even “burnt” water that is seperated into hydrogen/oxygen is reformed as water, and is also not consumes. Membrane seperation is not a hemical process, it is simply a way to filter out salt.

The only resource that is then consumed in the process of desalinating water is energy. Energy is limitless as far as human lifespans go. The earth has enough uranium to last 100 billion years at man’s current energy needs. This does not include Mars and venus or the moon which could likey have more.

The wasted uranium impurity in coal has more energy potential than the coal itself. There is also Thorium, which is even more plentiful than Uranium.

The only reason we entertain the idea of an energy crisis is because uneducated iditos derailed the the program in the 80’s like cave men reacting out of fear to fire or the wheel.

Wind would require about 700 300 foot tall structures to be built in order to equal the power generation of 1 nuclear reactor (1 GW versus 1.5 MW).

Wind is a fairy tale, as is ethanol, bio-diesl, solar, and wave energy. Hydrogen is also not an energy “source” buy an energy storage medium, there is almost no free hydrogen anywhere on the planet. All the mechanism for obtaining it mean blowing more of another form of energy in it’s production than you can recouperate by using it.

Anyone against nuclear power is an obstructionist to human progress, and freedom.

Folks, we had better get “locked on” to the realization that there are no “limitless” resources. Almost everything is in a finite supply, whatever it is.

Whether a supply of something ends today, or eons away, it will end one day.

What happens when the ocean begins to look Lake Lanier after tears of desalination? Especially with the H2O theory of seperating water into oxygen and hydrogen for fuel.

“Burning” water, go figure.

The wind, solar and other types of energy are where we need to be headed, there just won’t be the “sales” of items to make commissions on that drives the economy today.

How many windmills would a billions of dollars nuke plant put up, all which could be located closer to there needed consumer.

Plus we need to be switching over to DC power which can be stored, for lights and low power apps, and used as needed, or saved until needed.

Without a doubt Jace is correct, allowing the market to set the price of water would help prevent shortages. The drought we’re in currently is extremely rare in it’s severity and I suspect we’d still have suffered pain even with market prices for water. However the market would have begun to make corrections long before the government did and thus solutions would have appeared much sooner.

For those interested here’s a brief description of elasticity. Cheapseats is correct that elasticity is an important consideration, but even with inelastic goods like gasoline, the market moves to make corrections. Demand for inelastic goods may not decrease all that much but other solutions appear when the government gets out of the way and let’s entrepreneurs do the heavy lifting.

You’re still missing the point. The wasters can afford to waste water on long showers, watering their lawns, and wherever else they’re sticking a hose, even if the price is high enough to price lower middle class out of the necessary water market, say for bathing, sewage, and drinking. There is no price that would restrict wasteful usage by wealthy people and allow necessary use by less wealthy people. A market would settle out too high to allow even limited use by less wealthy people.

We’re fine with that if it’s Coca-cola or Faberge eggs, but we still have a social responsibility to provide water service, even to poor people.

A tiered service might work for that, but some of you oppose that, too.

I know a lot of municipalities have implemented the tiered system, but to not change the pricing in this emergency situation defeats the purpose. The pain threshold on the high end needs to be exponentially higher.

I agree the system is not perfect and it does not take into account multiple member households and perhaps there should be some personal responsibility that kicks in for a single member household, but there are plenty of other government pricing structures that reward multiple member households and penalize single member such as public education.

Honestly, my showers aren’t any shorter or longer than they were before the water restrictions began.

You made a good point, I’m not a responsible citizen when it comes to water restrictions. I guess I’m more cynical because I can spot the houses that water their lawns, plus I see the sprinklers on Mansell Road every morning.

With our current pricing system, there is no incentive for me to be responsible. That’s just tough. That’s the problem with price controls in general, they don’t create incentive. Let the market price the water and I promise that people like me will be much more responsible.

I’d say you wrote a pretty good piece. The only thing I would add is that market pricing and adding more reservoirs are mutually exclusive of each other when it comes to drought solutions. Whether you want to point fingers at Sonny Perdue, past administrations, Democrats, Republicans, illegal aliens, yankees, developers, George Bush, global warming or Bill Clinton is irrelevant to our current problem and the need for a emergency measures. Sure one solution is to hire an army of water police and enlist water neighborhood watch programs, but I believe a more effective and efficient solution would be to simply raise the price.

The market price should be set according to how much supply we have left in our reservoirs. If the price is too high, as a result of low reserves, then we should consider adding more reservoirs as a means of lowering the price of water. To continue to price it as if there is an unlimited supply, which obviously there is not, is insane.

I wondered whether is was the drought or bad management also. But you’ve got to remember that this drought in the face of mass expansion (and the debt coupled with it) would be a formula for disaster. I’ve heard a number of landscape companies state their business is down 80% – I don’t know too many businesses that could survive an 80% drop in sales for very long.

One only needs to look back to the 1970’s oil crisis and the small cars that flooded the market to see that pricing does work.

You’re muddling a lot of issues together concerning the tiered pricing system. You’re whole “When you get down to things that are necessary to preserve life” argument is actually supporting the tiered pricing system. That’s the point – to make sure people get the bare necessities at a reasonable price.

Keep in mind, what the Metro area uses is peanuts compared to what is being sent down to the ocean. Of course you’re length of shower time and it’s relevancy to the drought / Chattahochee flow only matters if you’re on a septic system.

I take shorter showers now because that’s the appropriate and responsible thing to do, isn’t it? I mean, saying you’re taking longer ones, using more water and impacting others, just because it doesn’t cost anything additional just reaffirms every negative stereotype about libertarianism, doesn’t it?

And I’m not disputing that a higher price wouldn’t deter you, but I’m just kinda stunned that you brag about taking long ones despite voluntary requests for you to think of how best to manage what is a communal resource.

Jace and Chris addressed your comments on price not effecting demand, but let me add something regarding supply.

Current non nuclear utilizing technology can supply desalinated water at about $900 per acre foot of water (the standard measurement of reservoir sized water units). A half acre foot is enough for a single household for an entire year, so $450 a year per family or $40 a month. (This would be in addition to your current monthly bill, as that is mostly treatment, delivery and maintenance of equipment).

So, for double the current bill, you could supply limitless water from the ocean using high pressure membrane separation and never have to worry about personal water consumption again.

The problem is that water is not allowed to float with market conditions and is provided “for free” so there is no profit incentive or reason to supply water from alternative means.

If water had a cost 3 times what it does now, desalination would be easily profitable. But, as long as we refuse to allow economics to function properly, this will never happen.

Also, desalinated water has close ties to nuclear power, since the electricity demand would be met so easily, so it’s a win-win.

The same will hold true of water pricing.

You cannot buy your way out of a drought. Especially ironic since we pretty well sold ourselves into one. Well, not the drought so much as the scarcity of the water and the rapid depletion of any reserves.

I can’t recall the exact quote but it involves something about waking up and discovering that you cannot eat money. You can’t drink it, cook with it, or bathe with it, either.

Interesting comment from mondaymorning as I know of at least one other green industry business that failed and tried to blame it on water restrictions until it was revealed that they basically had imploded their own business well before water restrictions went into effect.

The drought is a convenient cover for the mismanagement that has been taking place since 2004 when Roark Capital took over from the Pike family.

Over-expansion and underfunding is killing Pike, not the lack of rain. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous at best…..

Incorrect. The SUV market is tanking and gas efficient cars are in more demand. Diesel cars are in more demand, and (at least by observation of price) diesel demand is up.