Revolution in Coachella

Revolutionary thoughts in Coachella:

Coachella Valley Water District officials are considering moving from flat-rate water pricing to a tiered structure as early as next year. Residential water customers' rates would be based on how much water they use.

"It all leads back to conservation - promoting people to be efficient with their water use," he said.

In the valley, different classes of domestic water-users would be established, taking into consideration lot sizes, he said.

Coachella is in Southern California -- basically in the desert -- and gets about 300,000 acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado river. This quantity is about double that used in San Diego, which has 1.2 million residents. How do the 250,000 people* in Coachella manage to use ten times as much water per capita as people in San Diego? Un-metered water is a good place to start. If it's free, who cares about conserving it, right?

Bottom Line: If you want people to be careful about their water use, charging them for their use is probably a good place to start. Un-metered water is one of the number one reasons that people in the western US "waste" so much water. Coachella should meter AND the metering should be based on per-capita use -- why charge less to a guy with a golf course-sized lot than a family on a small lot. Meter and charge per capita rates that rise quickly when water is wasted.

*100,000 "customers" (homes/businesses) @ 2.5 people/customer. Coachella's farmers also use a lot of water; their average gross value of $8,000/acre means they are probably getting good production from the water used.