Back in 2008, I spent far too much time doing research for an elaborate joke about Dennis Kucinich being a ventriloquist’s dummy.  I was surprised to find out that there was a post war boom in dummy manufacturing that was spurred on by a glut in surplus materials.  If we could somehow manage to put an end to the making of war, we would have a similar glut of material, maybe even bigger.  Who knows what cottage industries might spring up to make use if it.  Some materials could be repurposed for alternative energy projects.

Taugher says:

A former Bush administration official [Manson] whose tenure was marked by systematic attempts to weaken endangered species protections has gone to work for a powerful California farm district [Westlands] that has the same aim in the Delta.

I’ll put it this way: Show me that this is NOT corrupt.

General Comment No. 15 [pdf] is the authoritative interpretation of what the human right to water is under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

So what does GC15 (2003) say?

Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. It is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights. The Committee has been confronted continually with the widespread denial of the right to water in developing as well as developed countries. Over one billion persons lack access to a basic water supply, while several billion do not have access to adequate sanitation, which is the primary cause of water contamination and diseases linked to water. The continuing contamination, depletion and unequal distribution of water is exacerbating existing poverty. States parties have to adopt effective measures to realize, without discrimination, the right to water, as set out in this general comment.

Fine words, but how do you get it implemented? How do you get “States parties” to listen?

Well, first you sing Kumbaya:

Water should be treated as a social and cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good. The manner of the realization of the right to water must also be sustainable, ensuring that the right can be realized for present and future generations

Uh, ok, “make it cultural” — but make sure that your culture is a sustainable one. You know, the ones that take care of the helpless, like…

States parties should give special attention to those individuals and groups who have traditionally faced difficulties in exercising this right, including women, children, minority groups, indigenous peoples, refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, migrant workers, prisoners and detainees

Ok, so we have to make sure that prisoners and refugees get water. Uh, fine. And how do we do that? By giving people water or…

The obligation to respect requires that States parties refrain from interfering directly or indirectly with the enjoyment of the right to water. The obligation includes, inter alia, refraining from engaging in any practice or activity that denies or limits equal access to adequate water; arbitrarily interfering with customary or traditional arrangements for water allocation; unlawfully diminishing or polluting water, for example through waste from State-owned facilities or through use and testing of weapons

Wait a sec? We can’t ruin water with weapons testing? Whose laundry list is this?

Ok, so let’s get serious. How do we implement this? What’s the plan of action?

The strategy and plan of action should be devised, and periodically reviewed, on the basis of a participatory and transparent process; it should include methods, such as right to water indicators and benchmarks, by which progress can be closely monitored; the process by which the strategy and plan of action are devised, as well as their content, shall give particular attention to all disadvantaged or marginalized groups;

I get it. Hire bureaucrats. Like the ones who wrote this 18 page, 8,000 word manifesto.

But what if we don’t? Are there any consequences for failure to comply with this?

To demonstrate compliance with their general and specific obligations, States parties must establish that they have taken the necessary and feasible steps towards the realization of the right to water. In accordance with international law, a failure to act in good faith to take such steps amounts to a violation of the right.

And then what? The Swiss army invades? Seriously. That’s where it stops. They never get to “…and then what?”

Bottom Line: I have never read such a load of shit (and I’ve read a LOT of shit!) This top-down, “if wishes were horses,” sanctimonious, unrealistic, self-serving crap not only wastes time, but it distracts us from getting the job done. I don’t know who paid for this meaningless drivel, but I sure hope that they got champagne and hookers on the side, cause it’s a black-hole of nonsense. Can we PLEASE get a realistic plan, a plan that consists of more than 8,000 words — 60 clauses! — of “do what we tell you”! Damn.

According to this letter from environmental groups [pdf], the all-in cost (operations, capital, energy) of delivered water to WWD is $150/acre-foot. What’s interesting is that we don’t know what WWD pays the Bureau of Reclamation for its water. (I’m guessing it’s free, since WWD has contracts.)

According to this PPIC piece [pdf], subsidies are misunderstood [these are my summaries of their points]:

1. The value of subsidies is capitalized into land prices. That was a windfall for farmers at the beginning of subsidies, but not farmers that bought land later; they paid more, since they counted on subsidies continuing.
2. “Eliminating water subsidies is not the only way to encourage farmers to conserve water.” Farmers will be more efficient if they can sell conserved water in markets.

While I agree that both of these statements are true, I do not agree that they justify the continuation of subsidies, both explicit (prices lower than cost) and implicit (price lower than what others would pay, which implies an “opportunity cost” from potential misallocation). Further:

1. This excuse can be offered anywhere, at anytime, but two wrongs (we gave you a subsidy, so we have to keep giving you a subsidy) don’t make a right. The same logic implies that we should never stop a bad program. Yes, we should — as soon as we see that it’s not working.
2. If farmers had to buy their water on markets, then it would still go to highest and best use, but the money from that value would go to taxpayers, not farmers. Further, farmers who are given water think “how do I use my allocation?” Farmers facing a market price for water think “how much do I need?” That’s a totally different idea. It’s easier to use less when you have to buy it, instead of cutting back/selling what you have.

Bottom Line: Subsidies lead you to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise do. Those distortions in behavior may be good (free vaccines) but they are often bad (cheap corn for feedlots and HFCS). Use them rarely and carefully!

Hattips to JM and RM

Economics is the study of resource allocation. It informs decision-making by comparing different options by a common denominator (money).

At this point the haters say “you can’t put a dollar value on everything!”. This may be true, but merely attempting to put a financial value on non-financial objects is part of the beauty of using economics in policy-making. It forces us to reconsider how we value things. This is important because we are rarely asked to justify our intuitive decision-making cognitive processes and the result is we are often wrong.

“Yeah, they are paying 80 percent of his wages and overhead. It’s a win-win for him and me…”

“…but then I fired another guy; he just cost too much compared to the new guy.”

So we get + 1 job - 1 job = 0 new jobs, more profits for my friend and more taxes for us.

None of this would have happened if my friend wasn’t encouraged to take advantage of this new program to “get America back to work.” I’m guessing that this is happening across the country.

Bottom Line: You can’t make jobs where there’s no demand, but you can sure waste money pretending that you know what you’re doing!

Is a job still green if it’s created not by the market, but by subsidy or mandate? Consider the claims being made by the subsidy-dependent corn ethanol industry. Growth Energy, an industry lobby group, says increasing the percentage of ethanol blended into the U.S. gasoline supply would create 136,000 jobs. But an analysis by the Environmental Working Group found that no more than 27,000 jobs would be created, and each one could cost taxpayers as much as $446,000 per year. Sure, the government can create more green jobs. But at what cost?

But then the author adds a myth of his own:

The United States will continue going green by simply allowing engineers and entrepreneurs to do what they do best: make products that are faster, cheaper and more efficient than the ones they made the year before.

Remember that US carbon output has dropped because we displaced our pollution. Instead of making the product here, we buy it from China, where the same (or more!) pollution is produced in meeting our consumer demands.

Bottom Line 2: The carbon bubble, which I called 16 months ago, is getting bigger!

So here’s the bottom line: The legality of groundwater marketing depends on common law doctrines that vary by state and were created long before massive groundwater water marketing was even possible. The public trust doctrine does not apply to groundwater and does not prohibit water marketing, at least as currently applied by courts.

But he’s worried about overdrafting. No worries, I said:

Economists have the solution to your problem. It’s NOT lawsuits. It’s either:

1. Self regulation by ALL overlying property owners;
2. Taxes on withdrawal to stabilize water tables; or
3. Quantification (adjudication) of individual rights.

After that “cap” you can trade

1. Provides more background on the state’s current approach to groundwater management;
2. Addresses current issues with groundwater management, including the impact of water quality on water supply;
3. Addresses the disconnect between the law and science of groundwater; and
4. Reviews other states’ approaches to groundwater management.

After that, the LAO recommends that the Legislature:

• Phase in a more comprehensive groundwater monitoring system to allow the state to focus funding and technical assistance efforts in the areas of greatest need.
• Establish Active Management Areas (a defined geographic area where specific rules are established to govern the withdrawal and use of groundwater), in circumstances where groundwater overdraft potential or the extent of pollution problems are the highest.
• Bring science and law together to modernize groundwater law to accurately reflect the physical interconnection of surface water and groundwater.
• Consider phasing in statewide groundwater permitting over a multiyear period, based on data from expanded monitoring requirements, while maintaining local control over implementation of permitting to the extent possible.

I totally agree, and…

1. Don’t make Arizona’s mistake about exempting “household” wells in AMAs. That exemption has been big enough to drive a subdivision through. Read more here (source of photo)
2. Orange County has been taxing groundwater withdrawals since 1953!
3. SO TRUE: “The erroneous distinction now reflected in California law between surface water and groundwater is an impediment to the establishment of surface water rights that accurately reflect the science of water.” No rights, no markets; no markets, no “highest and best use,” and bad for us.

I was shocked to see that Catherine Freeman (LAO author of this report), was not on the agenda at the WEF’s International Groundwater Conference, to be held in June near San Francisco. Big mistake — or was it?

This is wrong in so many ways. First, there’s the extra bottle-police who shoudl be working to get MORE water into the area. Second, there’s that stupid supply and demand thing [control prices = less supply when demand is rising = shortage!]. Third, there’s the blame shift from bureaucrats and politicians who SHOULD BE FIXING the bloody pipes. Damn.

Bottom Line: Politicians are making it worse. Reminds me of NOLA and Katrina.

Given the fact that one liter of oil can contaminate one million liters (one ML), that means that the BP spill may be contaminating 795 km^2 of sea water per day. (How much is that in gallons or acre feet? A lot!)

Pessimistic Bottom Line: Damn.
Optimistic Bottom Line: No worries. 3,000 days of water to go.***

• He speaks truth! Chuck Howe tears apart a proposal to ship water to Colorado’s Front Range that’s based on unreal costs and imaginary customers.
• A distraction: TapIt’s website and iPhone application users can locate the nearest participating business that acts as a water refill location. Whatever happened to using the tap in the bathroom?
• Why “remunicipalization” (buying back water systems from investor-owned companies) may not really save money for citizens:
  

  …the public sector is very bad at pricing risk. Cost over-runs are a way of life in most central and local government departments. Either they get mopped up by the tax-payer or through cuts in services. The response is not to find a way of pricing risk, but to find a way of avoiding risk, which typically means taking a very conservative attitude towards innovation. It means that whatever money the public sector might save through cutting profit margins, it loses subsequently through lack of innovation.

• I just met Harvey Molotch, intellectual founder of the idea that real estate developers drive urban growth/sprawl. I should have cited him in my article on SoCal sprawl.
• Good news, twice: Desalination is going forward in Monterey, where supplies are tight and demand is VERY low. In Marin, it’s slowing down, because people have reduced demand.

Hattips to DG and DW

Lemoore Naval Air Station’s 18-thousand acres lie entirely within the Westland’s water district, the district most affected by the severe reductions in water imposed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to protect “endangered species” in the delta.

But without that water, Capt Knapp says, his “partner” farmers who cultivate the 12-thousand acres of farmland around his air station cannot do their job. A job he depends upon to accomplish his mission.

“What does farming do for NAS Lemoore and air operations? We pick crops that do not attract birds,” Knapp says.

Besides the reporter’s interesting use of “endangered,” we also have here an interesting example of brain failure, some notion that failure to deliver water will lead to dead airmen. (This is no accident. The reporter - Torres - has more “articles” like this. Is he a Westlands employee?)

If the air force wants non-bird crops, then the air force can get non-bird crops, no matter who is in charge or how much water they get. That’s because the air force can kill anyone who disagrees… duh.

Bottom Line: There is no national security interest behind water deliveries. Stick with contracts and the rule of law, not fear and propaganda.

“If somebody has a well in a town or village in the developing world and we put concrete around the well – nothing else – it becomes an ‘improved source of water’; the quality is the same but you have ‘improved’ the physical structure, which has no impact,” said Biswas. “They are not only underestimating the problem, they are giving the impression the problem is being solved. What I’m trying to say is that’s a bunch of baloney.”

[snip]

Biswas will also tell the Global Water Intelligence conference in Paris that water problems are caused not by physical scarcity of supplies but by poor management, including corruption, interference by politicians and inexperience. Such comments will be controversial in an industry dominated by companies providing technological solutions to “water stress” or “scarcity” – a lack of reliable supplies for average daily needs – which experts estimate affect more than 1 billion people around the world.

[snip]

He is calling for politicians to be removed from water management, well-paid experts to be appointed to run water authorities and more public outcry when supplies are too bad to drink.

In 2008, I said this at Freakonomics:

The goal being measured and pursued (improved drinking water sources) is not the originally proclaimed goal (sustainable access to safe drinking water). This discrepancy is no accident. Rather, it reflects the difference between the ambitions of development activists (safe and sustainable) and the realities of development bureaucrats.

Since “safe” is hard to measure, bureaucrats use the presence of “improved drinking water supplies” as a proxy for water quality — and they quantify that by counting pipes, pumps, and faucets.

[snip]

We know that thousands of well-meaning people will be spending billions of dollars to install pipes, pumps, etc. Will those pipes deliver safe and sustainable water? We can’t be sure about that result — since it’s not being measured — but we can be sure that projects that deliver pipes will get funded, bureaucrats who deliver 100 percent pipe coverage will be lauded for helping the poor, and outsiders are likely to confuse 100 percent pipe coverage with 100 percent access to “safe and sustainable” drinking water.

Bureaucrats will declare victory, outsiders will applaud, projects will wrap up, money will disappear, and those unlucky enough to have pipes with unsafe and unsustainable water will be left to their own devices.

So has the international development community tried to avoid such an ineffective and wasteful outcome? No. Instead, it has pressed for enough money to install pipes everywhere…

Is it possible, however, that money spent on pipes will help? Perhaps yes but probably not. Effective water management requires good institutions — i.e., a framework for the formation and enforcement of local rules and norms that will deliver safe and sustainable local supplies. After all, how useful is a well without a means of allocating its water or maintaining its flow? How safe are pipes when they carry water of unknown quality? How sustainable is supply from an overdrafted aquifer?

I am glad to be in such good company (even though I’ve never met him

Now, will they listen to us? Or are they going to continue ignoring what works and keep doing what suits them, not the poor.

Bottom Line: Aid that does no good is not just wasted, it’s inhumane.

A North State water agency has filed suit in federal court in Sacramento based on a 77-year-old state law that says water shall not be shipped from its area of origin unless and until the local water contractors’ thirsts have been quenched.

In other words, they do not want “foreigners” to buy the water and take it elsewhere.

I got this context from an insider:

…this suit was filed by the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority members who have a similar contract as Westlands and others and are subject to shortages….they are using the State’s Area of Origin laws to try and keep more water local to meet existing needs.

…the courts are keeping everything in flux. Also, we have some real problems with the market working when infrastructure is lacking or it is not available due to regulatory restrictions; and the environmental review processes take too much time or are legally challenged…

Here’s an update with more background.

Bottom Line: Barriers to trade have visible winners and invisible losers, but they always harm society overall (aka, highest and best use, assuming no externalities).