California is reeling from a drought, rather like the one suffered by Israel in 1998-2002. California, with an 840-mile coastline on the world's largest ocean, has a water shortage; Israel, with a mere 170-mile coast line, does not. Israel invests in desalinization; California is building a high-speed train at a cost of somewhere between $68 billion and $90 billion, the most expensive public works project in the nation's history with no completion date in sight, but finds the $1 billion price tag on its first desalinization plant too high to bear, even though its 50 million gallon per day output would meet the daily requirements of something like 280,000 of the modest-income consumers now the hardest hit by the rationing system in place.
Besides, such plants have what the LA Times calls "a weighty environmental footprint" stemming from their high energy use. Better no water than more emissions, and no price too high to pay for mass transit, serving locations and on schedules specified by central planners. Oh, I forgot to mention that economist Charles Cicchetti, a long-time colleague now resident near the City of Angels, points out that California's porous infrastructure loses half the water put into it through leaks and evaporation, an example of politicians' preference for new attention-getting projects over mundane maintenance.
Having misallocated capital to needs less pressing than coping with its drought, California finds it necessary to ration water. Israel puts its farmers first; California allocates precious water to preserve the tiny delta-smelt, leaving thousands of acres fallow as a result. And now new regulations seem to be doing something surprising for this left coast state, home to progressive ideas. One would expect that any rationing scheme would be tilted towards meeting the needs of lower-income residents. Think again. The New York Times reports that a water user in a "working-class town" has cut her use to 178 gallons per day by, among other things, only flushing every third time, tearing out the lawn, and giving up daily showers. Meanwhile, one resident of fashionable Los Angeles Hills uses 30,000 gallons per day, "the equivalent of 400 toilet flushes each hour with two showers running constantly, with enough water left over to keep the lawn perfectly green." Oh, yes. And the low-income consumer ($22,000 per year) was hit with an $80 fine on her most recent two-month water bill, while the water guzzlers in Bel Air easily kept within their quota. Besides, if they are fined they don't notice it because, says Marty Adams, a senior assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (annual budget in excess of $800 million, more than 8,500 employees), "accountants or landscapers pay the water bill, and they don't even see it."
Anatole France had it right, "The law in its majestic equality prohibits both rich and poor to sleep under bridges" -- were he living in today's California, he might have added that the state's regulators maintain no such equality of rich and poor when it comes to flushing toilets.