I am ready for the incoming water wars, as detailed in the documentary Tank Girl
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Yeah, I thought about if I had to choose between unaffordable water vs undrinkable water. Thinking of all the things I could use poisoned water for that didn’t involve drinking it, and how expensive it wouldoesn’t be to buy water for drinking… but if I couldn’t afford the water bill, I also couldn’t afford to have it tested either. And clearly Flint has both problems.
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Thanks for the info. I had not heard of the journal, and those tweets came up in a search. I will remove that part.
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I wonder what percentage of people use wells vs have utility supplied water. For those of us using wells, it would be hard to raise the price of our water without pretty comprehensive changes to the law. Of course Nestle dreams of doing so, but it would be hard to enforce.
aka MAGA Camps.
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Then again a well starts at about $15000 to put in, I think, and the guarantee of good water is not there…
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Kentucky Congressional District #5 is always a mess
Assuming one can afford to move.
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I don’t think it’s a big deal - you put something in public and run the risk it shows up somewhere.
But yeah … academic publishing. Never have so many smart people fought for so little.
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Sometimes the water isn’t the issue, it’s the sewer part of the bill. Around here they bill the sewer proportional to your water use, and the sewer system is a century old crumbling ruin that was allowed to get that bad, like most US infrastructure, due to government negligence. Water for a house with 5 people and one laundry cost $2000 last year. Taxes were $8k. That’s $10k before any mortgage or maintenance costs.
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I talked to someone years ago who was an engineer for water works projects, and he said that eventually it was going to be an issue where people are going to be forced to use less one way or another.
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Stop moving to the desert.
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Start investing in water recycling and conservation.
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It turns more insidious in a lot of U.S. municipalities. Despite being seen as a requirement, you’re of course entirely on the hook for paying for your own electricity and water. So if something happens to where you can no longer pay and have your service cut off, the local health and safety board can tell you that you can no longer live there.
Yup. “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good…”
Of course they can just turn it off. Read up on Detroit news from 2014-ish, and you’ll see DWSD did just that…to the poorest members of the community while letting 5-figure overdue bills to corporations slide.
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I think the desert thing is an important issue. There is plenty of water, just not always in the places or forms that people want. If California were to work on innovations in desalination instead of taking it from people who did not decide to live in a desert, many of us would have much easier lives. Maybe that will be the next big lifesaving breakthrough for humanity. It would be worth investing in just to see Nestle take a hit.
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How long until stillsuits become the next urban chic?
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It blows me away every time I drive rt 5 north from Sacramento and see rice fields. Yes, you can grow water hungry crops like rice & alfalfa in a desert and produce them cheaper than wet states with less sunshine, as long as the water is free or nearly so. There’s fallow farmland all over the East that gets plenty of rain, but can’t compete with watering a desert.
Desalination works fine for potable water, it just makes crops way more expensive breaking the CA agriculture model that consumes 80% of their water.
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Yes, but imagine if there was enough of a breakthrough that the cost dropped to negligible.
Doubtful given the physics of it, entropy is a stubborn bitch who needs to be paid. Might as well wish for free energy.
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