To deal with water scarcity, you need the right tools
Lauren Steely: For a century, water management in the West was an engineering profession. Now it must be an economics profession.
Archive of posts filed under the economics category.
Water markets: “a servant of sound governance, not the master”
Some useful insights from Dustin Garrick on water management lessons the western United States can learn from Australia: Australia’s experience shows that water markets have an important role to play. But they are a servant of sound governance, not the master. Above all, markets are certainly not free, nor are they self-sustaining. Like a marriage, …
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Another Southern California ag to municipal water sharing deal takes shape
The Imperial Irrigation District’s board tomorrow will consider an expanded agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that would provide additional flexibility for water conservation in the big desert agricultural district and move water to meet near term drought response needs in the region’s coastal cities. The deal uses the “Intentionally Created Surplus” …
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Real time water meter data causes people to use more water, not less
The idea of installing smart water meters is in vogue these days, with the idea that water users, if made more aware of how much water they’re using all the time (rather than just when they get their monthly bills), will use less: In the spring of 2005, the City of Aurora, Colorado offered residents …
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Governance and the Animas River mine waste mess
The pictures out of Durango today of mine waste in the Animas River are horrifying, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency is rightly taking a beating for the catastrophic mine waste leak: The overall message from federal regulators was “we’re very sorry.” “This is a huge tragedy and it’s hard being on the other side …
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UC team: California ag “positioned to weather this drought”
The latest analysis by a University of California team has concluded (pdf) that agriculture in that state is doing pretty well in the current drought, all things considered: The current drought is causing large economic losses but given innovative responses by farmers and others, those losses have been manageable and California agriculture is positioned to …
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Water policy and the West’s housing market
One of the intellectual frustrations with trying to wrap my head around water policy in the western United States is that it’s really sort of everything policy. There’s climate science and hydrology and history and law and agricultural economics. And, the subject for this afternoon, there’s urban development economics. Much of the policy struggle has …
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Drought adaptive capacity, Kings County CA edition
In your latest reminder that California agriculture has shown some remarkable capacity to adapt to that state’s crushing drought, Todd Fitchette in Western Farm Press reports that total agricultural farm gate receipts in Kings County, in California’s drought-devastated southern Central Valley, were up 9 percent last year: Kings County agricultural values advanced 9 percent from …
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When the drought story is really a poverty story
Andrea Costillo in the weekend Fresno Bee: East Porterville’s poverty and education shortcomings stand out in a state analysis of communities with the highest health risks. The analysis from the California Environmental Protection Agency shows the town’s poverty level is among the highest 10% in the state. In education, the community ranks worse than 91% …
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Drought and media bias
Tom Curwen has a great story in today’s Los Angeles Times of the sort that I’d like to see more of – beyond “OMG California is toast” drought coverage to look at what works in the state’s water management, what sort of adaptive capacity exists in the places where water is not running out. Which, …