How utility people—and everybody else—think about water issues Where's your head at? Each year the American Water Works Association (AWWA) conducts a survey of its members on the State of the Water Industry (SOTWI).
Why rate structures, not assistance programs, offer the most promising path to water affordability yeah this stinks kid, but it beats smallpox When discussions of water and sewer affordability turn to policy solutions, they
Bad water boys, whatchya gonna do when they come for you? Many California communities restricted outdoor irrigation during the recent drought. Did enforcement matter? Faced with water scarcity, communities sometimes restrict residential outdoor water use,
Social science and defying the choice between clean and affordable water Warning: sports cliché coming. Boxing is more popular as a literary metaphor than as a spectator sport these days. Still, I’m a
A California Surprise, Part 3 California’s private utilities continued to out-conserve public utilities even after the state lifted its mandate. In 2015 the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) ordered drinking water utilities
A California Surprise, Part 2 More drought porn (this is used to be Folsom Lake) How private implementation separates public policies from their political costs. Warning: this post contains hardcore wonkery. In 2015 the
A California surprise, Part I Drought porn Something unexpected happened when California ordered its utilities to save water: the state’s investor-owned private utilities out-conserved local governments. California’s long-term drought began as early as 2007,
This guy measures water affordability as (Avg bill ÷ MHI)<2.0% Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad measurement, part 4 My criticism of average bill ÷ Median Household Income (MHI) as a measure of household-level
Not actually in the book of Numbers Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad measurement, part 3 As my last couple of posts explain, the conventional method of measuring household-level water affordability is to divide
Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad measurement, part 2 As my last post explained, the conventional method of measuring household-level water affordability is to divide a utility’s average residential bill by its community’s Median
This officer is not trying to measure statewide alcohol sales A feral howl on the conventional method of assessing household water affordability, part 1 Recently a colleague asked me how I first got interested
Why water utility service can be simultaneously underpriced and unaffordable Analysis of water and sewer affordability implies a concern that the prices of these critical services might be too high. At the same time,
hyperopia (hīˌpə-rōˈpē-ə). n. A condition in which visual images come to a focus behind the retina of the eye and vision is better for distant than for near objects Last week I had the pleasure of
