
In Tucson, subsidies for rainwater harvesting produce big payoff - fern12
https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/community/2018/01/09/in-tucson-subsidies-for-rainwater-harvesting-produce-big-payoff
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mcone
Native New Mexican here. Rainwater collection is more nuanced than this
article suggests. Water that runs off a roof of a building isn't "wasted." It
typically drains into an aquifer or a river. This is well-known in Tucson, a
city that pumped so much groundwater that the Santa Cruz river dried up
decades ago. [1]

There are also legal ramifications. In New Mexico, it's not clear whether
rainwater collection is legal. [2] The water falling on your property could be
somebody else's water under the doctrine of prior appropriation.

[1] [https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/a-river-ran-through-
it/C...](https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/a-river-ran-through-
it/Content?oid=1068331)

[2] [http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2011/07/rainwater-
harvesting-i...](http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/2011/07/rainwater-harvesting-
in-new-mexico/)

~~~
kkylin
I just heard from someone that rainwater collection is banned in parts of
Colorado. Can someone with actual knowledge comment?

~~~
sliverstorm
It used to be illegal to do anything except direct the rainwater, e.g. direct
a downspout into your flower garden. You are now allowed 2 55-gallon rain
barrels.

The bummer is, even though you can now have rain barrels, it rains
infrequently enough in Colorado that it's not terribly economical to buy
55-gallon rain barrels.

At $2.77 per 1,000 gallons from the utility, with infrequent rainfall it's
pretty hard to ever recoup $176 for a 110 gallon system from
BlueBarrelSystems. You're looking at 580 rains required to break even- while
Denver, for example, sees only 40 days with "any measurable rainfall" a year.

~~~
fludlight
That might be the cost of the water today, but history suggests that the price
of water can fluctuate wildly. This is doubly true of the marginal cost beyond
a certain baseline, which, again, fluctuates. Even without a drought or
increase in regional population, you are vulnerable to (utility price, not
CPI) inflation after ~5 years. The math for computing a break even period thus
becomes squishy.

There are many people that place great value on being partially-off-the-grid,
on (conspicuous) conservation, and enjoy DIY projects.

~~~
sliverstorm
All good points, and certainly if you went entirely off-grid, avoiding a water
tap fee is big savings. Though, 110 gallons isn't going to get you very far if
you're totally off-grid.

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stretchwithme
Rather than subsidizing this or that conservation solution, wouldn't it be
better to charge a price for water that reflects the actual cost of depleting
the aquifer? Like shipping water in from elsewhere?

Water is another tragedy of the commons. Government often charges for the cost
of piping the water from the source, as if the water source had no value
itself.

Imagine if fish could be taken from the ocean for just the cost of taking it
from the ocean. Oh, wait. That's what we do! And overfishing is also another
tragedy of the commons in many populations.

It would be better if a water source was turned into a for-profit corporation
with the all the users of the aquifer each entitled to a share of the profits
based on past usage. Then they'd break even if they keep their usage the same,
but profit if they cut their usage. New residents and companies would pay the
market price for anything more than personal use, which nobody would have to
pay for.

It would have to cover all the users of the aquifer. Otherwise, those with
cheap access to it will profit at everybody else's expense.

That way, the people keep the water, nobody has to pay for personal use, but
everybody has a built in incentive to avoid uses of water that aren't worth
using up the valuable resource.

~~~
kaikai
Subsidies help pay installation costs, making people more likely to install
systems.

Inflating water prices would also disproportionally affect renters, who are
often lower-income, because they don't have the ability to make changes like
that for their homes.

~~~
wallace_f
Electricity prices are another example of something similar: they soar during
peak hours, but government keeps the price flat during the day. If the price
fluctuated, people would adjust their usage; but instead, a lot of games are
played to go about smoothing demand, and they don't work well. The result is
higher emissions and higher prices.

General carbon emissions are another example. The price burdened by society is
higher than the privatized cost.

Imagine we had a system that automatically rewarded cyclists, or people who
just take a cold shower--any of the millions of small things--for curbing
pollution. Well, price signals in supply and demand are already such a system.

The problem with subsidies, public policy initiatives, and awareness campaigns
is that they can't do as good of a job as simple supply and demand economics
in organizing human behavior efficiently--for the same reasons why command and
control economies don't work as well as market-based ones. Price signals work
very well.

And besides this argument for economic efficiency, there is the argument that
people's privatized incentives should be aligned with other's, if possible,
and policy should reward or punish decisions which bear benefits or costs on
society.

And if we want to help the poor, we should really just give them money to help
cover their expenses rather than adopting bad economic policy just because it
just so happens to be the one that is more kind to the poor. In other words,
it's not necessary to bake a smaller pie just in order for us to be able to
share it.

~~~
tzs
> Imagine we had a system that automatically rewarded cyclists, or people who
> just take a cold shower--any of the millions of small things--for curbing
> pollution.

Several prominent conservative Republicans proposed about a year ago a system
that would do that [1]. They were James Baker (Secretary of the Treasury under
Reagan, Secretary of State under GHW Bush), Martin Feldstein (chairman of
Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors), George Shultz (Secretary of State
under Reagan), Henry Paulson, (GW Bush's Treasury Secretary), and N. Gregory
Mankiw (chairman GW Bush's Council of Economic Advisers), and others.

Their proposal was for a revenue-neutral carbon tax starting at $40 per ton.
It would be collected at the source (such as at oil refineries), and the money
collected would be returned to to the taxpayers. They estimated that would be
about $2000 back to a family of four.

If the rate is set right, it would be break even for a person who is carbon
neutral. The tax would raise the prices on things they buy and use that
produce carbon, but their share of the distribution should be about the same
amount.

[1] [http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/group-prominent-
repub...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/group-prominent-republicans-
just-launched-longshot-bid-carbon-tax)

~~~
wallace_f
Dismissing political affiliations I think people can agree this would be good
public policy in the sense that it increases human welfare (for example,
Mankiw influenced my economics education positively, even if I do dislike some
of his politics. Another: Musk also supports a carbon tax, but is not
politically affiliated with the GOP).

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michaelbuckbee
I'm always interested in how and why things are designed. The article
highlights a simple+cheaper way of putting trees in a parking lot at Target
that as far as I can tell wasn't previously done because it's likely the
designs were done in a different climate.

~~~
UncleEntity
They were probably designed to direct the water out of the parking lot because
it's not a whole lot of fun coming out of a store after a good monsoon and
having your car parked in the middle of a lake.

Yep, been there, done that...

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eigen-vector
This is fantastic. When I lived in one of the southern states of India—where
water scarcity is a real problem—the government made it mandatory to have
rainwater harvesting systems installed in all government and residential
buildings. This happened in the year 2001. Since they didn't follow the
incentive model like in Tuscon, there was some resistance initially. However,
it took off—albeit grudgingly—and a plethora of 10 and 15 year studies proved
that the scheme singularly altered the water table in most parts of the state
avoiding potential droughts.

I don't understand why any region that faces water scarcity doesn't simply
make it a necessity.

~~~
jimmywanger
I'm not being sarcastic, but for some things, democracy is a hinderance.

For instance, in China, everybody is pretty much forced to learn Mandarin
(generally). The schools are taught in it, and if you don't do well in school
you won't get a good job and will be shown your way to irrelevance.

In India, I believe there are hundreds of languages being spoken. Imagine
their economic and political power if the government one day just said "All
government free education will be taught in English. There will be no Hindi,
Bengali, Keralan, etc etc for schools that receive government funding. Also,
all government forms will only be available in English and all government
offices will only speak English. If you don't speak English at least decently,
you will be fired."

You cannot get away with that in a democracy. In a dictatorship it's the
stroke of a pen. Which is ultimately better for the economy?

~~~
hydrox24
> Which is ultimately better for the economy?

Only asking this question will naturally lead you to hypotheticals where
dictatorships give better results. There are absolutely some systemic
disadvantages to democratic systems, but I don't think this is one of them.
There is enormous cultural richness and benefit and the multiplicity of
languages. The stroke of the pen would help the economy immensely, but also
destroy an extraordinary amount of culture and wealth, much of it intangible.

~~~
jimmywanger
> The stroke of the pen would help the economy immensely, but also destroy an
> extraordinary amount of culture and wealth, much of it intangible.

Maslov's pyramid. Does a starving peasant care about culture and intangible
"wealth" if trading that for food is what we're talking about? The Communists
rammed through a whole new writing system to replace a ~5k year old one and
nobody complained too much, even though it's ugly as heck.

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jxramos
I'm really digging this WaterDeeply website by the way. Lots of interesting
topics I've been slowly researching in the background over time. Looks like
they have pretty informative interviews, nice clean writing style too.

~~~
hydrox24
WaterDeeply is just one 'single-topic platform' that NewsDeeply[0] creates. I
follow their Syria deeply platform and find that incredibly helpful when I see
a bit of mainstream news coverage, but it doesn't provide enough context or
detail for me.

[0]: [https://www.newsdeeply.com/](https://www.newsdeeply.com/)

~~~
frandroid
Wow thanks for that.

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nraynaud
when I arrived in Phoenix, it took me a while to understand what was wrong
with the roofs here: often there is no gutter.

other oddity: some people water the lawn by simply flooding it (some front
lawns are specifically lower than the sidewalk for that). At first I though it
was stupid, then I saw people "watering" their lawn with sprinklers in the
middle of the afternoon. I am curious what ratio of the water even reaches the
grass.

~~~
s0rce
Flooding might be a bit excessive but its better to water less frequently with
more water as the water penetrates deeper and encourages root growth so the
plant becomes more tolerant of lower water conditions. Watering the lawn
during the hot parts of the day is silly in any climate.

Best solution is to get rid of most/all of your lawn if you live in the desert
with limited water, ie. no large river or something.

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drtillberg
I liked that at the top the publisher put "Read time Approx. 7 minutes".

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vpribish
Definitely need to check back after the novelty has worn off.

~~~
gitgreen
In a city as sensitive to water issues as Tucson this isn't novelty at all. I
participated in the student group that helped install cisterns at the UofA
visitors center back in 2006 and 2007. We got most of our ideas from a local
named Brad Lancaster who'd been doing it far longer.

~~~
itronitron
Yeah, Tucson takes this sort of thing seriously for a number of reasons, 1) it
is small enough (and relatively isolated) that there is a sense of community
2) people are willing to experiment 3) the people that have lived there the
longest care deeply about the environment 4) the environment can kill you
easily if you are not attentive (lighting strikes, flash floods, africanized
bees, and dehydration to name a few) and 5) it gets really freaking hot for 8
months of the year

