• 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