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Don’t penalize water savers, says editorial

Posted by: Maven on June 14, 2009 at 10:23 am

From the Whittier Daily News:

Yes, last week was an extraordinarily drizzly one. It was June gloom squared. No, that paltry precipitation will have no effect on the ongoing drought throughout much of California and the West. Nor will it end the certainty of rationing of various kinds from the top on down, from the mammoth Metropolitan Water District to the little water companies in our canyons and flatlands, from commercial concerns to your own front yard.

As we reported in April, the giant MWD, from which most of us get most of our water, is expecting us to use at least 10 percent less water this summer and yet to pay more for the privilege. It’s charging its member agencies about 20 percent more for the water they receive.

That’s an unhappy double-whammy.

And it’s going to be followed by another, very soon. Next year, the MWD expects to raise its rates by another 20 percent. It’s the first time since 1991 that imported water has been rationed and the first time since 1993 rates have increased so dramatically.

It’s also a reflection of the reality of the cost of getting water from wet places to our dry place – and of the fact that one wet place in particular, the Colorado River, is not so wet anymore.

Water politics are absolutely the most complicated politics in the West. Even more so than, say, a Rush Limbaugh fan confronted with an avid reader of The Nation, the true believers representing the two main factions of those politics are adamant that theirs is the only point of view that matters and that is true. Everything else is scurrilous lies, from their opposite points of view. And it’s all a conspiracy, of course.

Read more from the Whittier Daily News by clicking here.

June 14, 2009 · Filed Under Conservation, Southern California

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