Devils (and angels) in the details, Part 1 Governor Newsom (nice haircut in the black jacket, back to the camera) dragged his cabinet down the Central Valley to hear what folks had to say
 What low-income households pay for essential service in the United States This post reports findings from 2017; an update for 2019 is available here. Over the past 18 months I’ve been working to
Sometimes progress is visible in what you don’t see Earlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking to the annual conference of the California Water Association, an organization of that state’s investor-owned water
Remarks from the opening plenary session of the AWWA/WEF Transformative Issues Symposium Earlier this week the American Water Works Association and Water Environment Federation hosted their first-ever Transformative Issues Symposium, a two-day meeting focused on
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
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,
