Posted on 05/08/2014 4:45:17 PM PDT by Second Amendment First
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — The municipal water utility in this city, home to wide beaches, sun-kissed weekend getaways and evocative alternative scholarship, just got tough. Last week it started rationing water — for nonfarmers, the most draconian response to date to California’s debilitating drought.
The message to customers: Use more than your allotment, and it will cost you. A lot. Water bills below the allocation run $40 or so. Go above it, and fines pegged to the amount of excess water used will quickly double, triple or quadruple that bill.
“We live in a state where water supplies that are there 100 percent of the time, with 100 percent of reliability, don’t exist,” said Toby Goddard, the administrative services manager for the Santa Cruz Water Department. “It would be shortsighted of a utility to sell all it has to you now and not have anything for you a year out.”
Santa Cruz, whose fresh water supplies come from the shrinking San Lorenzo River and a small reservoir, has gone further than other strapped utilities in embracing the idea of rationing, with fines for those who exceed their allotted shares. But other utilities around the state now have a tiered pricing system. Basic water use comes cheap. Consumption that is compatible with modest landscaping comes at a slightly higher cost. Excessive use comes at premium prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“We live in a state where...
...government excesses, idiocy, and incompetence are a matter of civic pride.
We live in a state where.......this is what they did to our electric bill. They tiered it. Top rate is high.
/johnny
What should we do with our tax money?
Build infrastructure or buy the votes of the free sh•t army?
Cool... Glad I don’t live there. I use 30,000 gallons a week on my lawn. (which most of it goes into the water table) at a cost of $40 a year.
Barbara Streisand was paying about $22,000,00 a year for water at her house, a few years ago, I wonder how much it costs today?
What happens in CA when a homeowner puts in a well?
Water Crazed Ping
Soquel Creek has now instituted mandatory prison sentences for WaterCrime
Just kidding, but it’s close...
Hmmm... 5 billion on a high speed train to nowhere or 5 billion on a couple of desalinization plants with some infrastructure?
Right you are. They need a few “Pineapple expresses” or food prices are going to go way up.
The train to nowhere lined the pockets of politicians and their cronies. The Sacramento Liberal cesspool.
The loons don’t want Desal.
Might bring Evil Employed People onto the coast and muscle out the Surf Nazi/Beach Bolshevik leisure class.
And God Forbid we build a few reservoirs. Might kill a few trees, and destroy squirrel habitat.
Onoes OMG
I live in rural Caliornia in the high foothills of the Sierra Nevada mtns
which is the source of much of the state’s water. Many residents
are on well water and the well depths are all over the map. As
everywhere people settle their water issue prior to building their
homes. Post home construction well drilling is only when well
needs to be deeper or there is an intention to expand agriculture.
Santa Cruz is not a desert. It used to be redwood forest and
still has forested slopes on the western side of the coast range. but the water supply is not unlimited.
a neutron-belching “nucular powered” desalinization plant would be a swell addition to the Twin Lakes Lagoon area.
“What happens in CA when a homeowner puts in a well?”
I didn’t know, so I just looked and in all counties, you can drill a well, but there are issues where it is in the proximity to a septic tank. One of my neighbors has a well, that’s been there for 50 years or more. BTW we live in Contra Costa County which is east of San Francisco about 25miles.
“We live in a state where...
...where we haven’t built any new water infrastructure in 60 years even though the population doubled. We had NO way to predict these water shortages.”
“We live in state where we refuse to build more reservoirs AND flush huge amounts of water away for a trash fish”.....
Probably a SWAT team shows up.
” It was a desert 400 years ago when the Spanish priests were trying to convert the natives”
They worked hard and now we have mexicans!!
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