Los Angeles Upcoming Water Rate Hikes

First, thanks for all the emails on this from around the world. Two weeks ago I was reprimanded for suggesting the LADWP needs an outreach program. Today,WEds the 14th, the LADWP announced a 15 person outreach team to help residents reduce landscape water waste. THanks to everyone who chimed in on this, we made a difference.

Laurence Budd,

CLT, CLIA
www.urban-water-conservation.com
cell 970-402-3216
off. 970-490-1080

Prior to returning to the academic world I was a Public Works Commissioner in upstate New York and can offer some insight to water rates and usage. We had a three tier water rate structure when I arrived. It was as follows: The first 5,600 gallons in a three month period was $2.12 / 1000 gallons Then from 5,600 gallons to 640,000 gallons it was $ 4.26 / 1000 gallons The third tier was for use above 640,000 gallons/quarter and reverted back to $2.12 / 1000 gallons The third tier was for large customers and was encouraging significant waste among them. I implemented changes that increased the third tier rate by 15% in the first year. I immediately had the large customers calling and asking for a rate reduction. I asked them if the local electric utility would not do that and the answer was of course, no. I offered the large users numerous ideas for conserving water and reminded them that our town did not have an adequate long term supply. Most large users responded by actively starting to conserve water use. When I was responsible for the university's utility costs we had a water rate increase of 43% in one year. We responded by cutting the campus consumption from 255 million gallons/ year to 134 millions gallons / year in a two year period. This effectively negated the rate increase. The City then wanted us to recalibrate all our water meters. When we explained that that large a rate increase would cause any large user to reduce consumption, they did not believe us! Rates do send an appropriate signal.

Former Commissioner of Public Works for the Town of Bethlehem
and former Director of Campus Planning and Facilities Design,
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Oliver Holmes PE, LEED

AP Assistant Professor
School of Architecture
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
110 Eighth Street Troy, New York 12180
518 337 7262

Hi Jacob:

I suggest you contact Thomas Chesnutt PhD Economist who specializes in water rates and the economics of water conservation. You can contact him at [email protected]. Tom is based in Southern California so will be conversant with the L.A. context and how to avoid punishing low income and large families.

Hope this helps,
Glen Pleasance
Whitby Ontario Canada

Further to the business of setting water rates, see also this link below with several interesting sources.

http://drinkingwater.smallcommunityinfrastructure.ca/index.asp?type=summ ary&section=Rate_Setting&sid=19

The above site also contains a survey of household water consumption for key municipalities in coastal British Columbia, which report a mean HH consumption of water of roughly 6000 US gal. per month. This is quite a contrast to the figures from L.A. quoted by Laurence Budd, particularly considering that Southern California is a drought-prone region. There has been much discussion in past decades since the Canada signed a trade agreement with the USA, that water could and perhaps, should be sold to our water-poor neighbours. Clearly, demand-side management is a strategy that warrants consideration.

Neil 

hi Jacob

I'm afraid I don't have much information on how effective such a scheme would be. However, I think that economists usually estimate that if electricity prices go up by about 10% then consumption will drop by about 3%. I did have another thought about an aspect of your scheme which might be problematic from a humanitarian perspective. I wasn't sure if you mean that you would allow each household a moderate amount of water use per capita, or a moderate amount of water use per household? If you are planning to only allow people a moderate amount of water use per household then I think such a scheme might be unduly penalise poor people with large families. Unfortunately, unless you were to allocate water use on capita (which I can imagine would be very hard to do accurately) I can't really see a way around that.

Sorry!
Lucy

Excellent policy and practical work is happening in British Columbia, Canada ... see the links below. In particular, the Polis Project on Ecological Governance has put together a "Soft Path" guide to water management and a guide called beyond Pipes and Pumps, which discuss demand-side management and pricing structures in detail. Various researchers at Polis are working on this subject. Several communities in BC that have recently implemented multi-tier price structures have found them selves issuing bills in the 10s of thousands of dollars to home owners that have been mindlessly irrigating their subsoils with leaky irrigation systems. Clearly, this can be a bitter pill, but it appears to be very effective in getting the message out.
http://www.waterbalance.ca/waterbalance/home/wbnIndex.asp
http://www.waterbucket.ca
http://www.polisproject.org/researchareas/watersustainability

Cheers,
Neil 

Even here in rainy Auckland New Zealand, the average use per person per day is 170 litres. Four a family of four that works out to 20,400 litres per month. For those of you who still work in imperial measurements (like gallons, drams, and furlongs per fortnight) that's around 4600 gallons. Has anyone got any evidence on how effective it would be to introduce a three-tier system as follows? * moderate price up to a moderate level of use * higher amount after that point up to very high use * for anyone using above a certain fixed level (NOT per capita, NOT taking into account what kind of entity it is, whether business, household, school, whatever) require what we call a resource consent (the equivalent might be planning permission) The idea is to stop very high water use being seen as a luxury status behaviour. But it's only an idea I've heard suggested by a friend. I'd like to know if anyone has any experience with this kind of approach.

Thanks.
Jacob Rawls

Sustainability Advisor
EcoMatters Environment Trust
P.O. Box 15  215 New Lynn
WAITAKERE CITY
Auckland, New Zealand
Telephone: 09 826 0554
Mobile: 021 308 083
Fax: 09 826 0557
 

That's astonishing! Even the 15,000 gal per month which you quote as normal seems way too high. In Australia if a household (4 people) uses more than 5,000 gal per month they're considered high water users. Even with an extensive garden 10,000 is considered too high. We have just introduced a tiered pricing system in Melbourne (and we have been on moderate to high water restrictions for some time) but it remains to be seen if it will have a big impact.