Pricing water

In his ToT today, Howard Mechanic stumps for more rational pricing of effluent water to help balance revenues and address our water-mining problem. He sensibly takes a bite that's small enough for the average reader to chew, but we will need to go farther, of course.

Pricing is the most effective and arguably the easiest method for encouraging conservation and rational use of water, and it is vastly underused here given the magnitude of the problem we face.

As we wind up into the council election, I'd like to see a public debate on pricing that includes big changes in favor of conservative use. (We'll also need to look hard at legislation that will allow us to keep what we conserve for the future — there are some legal complications that need addressing.) If we can price water according to something like its real value, what we give up in green lawns we will more than get back in secure water resources into the future.