Californians are presently dealing with an historic drought and, this summer, residents of Toledo, Ohio had to rely on bottled water because their drinking water supply was unsafe to consume due to toxic algae in Lake Erie. These events have begun to raise public awareness regarding the value of clean water, but does the price we pay for water really reflect its value?
From Ensia's piece, "Hey, America: It's time to talk about the price of water:"
Water is the most essential utility delivered to us each day, meeting our drinking and sanitation needs and many others, from fire protection to irrigation. Incongruously, it is also the resource we value least. This is true generally for both the way we use water and the price we put on it.
On the global scale, Americans pay considerably less for water than people in most other
developed nations. In the U.S., we pay less for water than for all other utilities. Water’s historically cheap price has turned the U.S. hydrologic cycle abjectly illogical. Pennies-per-gallon water makes it rational for homeowners to irrigate lawns to shades of Oz even during catastrophic droughts like the one gripping California. On the industrial side, water laws that evolved to protect historic uses rather than the health of rivers and aquifers can give farmers financial incentive to use the most strained water sources for the least sustainable crops. In just one example, farmers near Yuma, Ariz. — the driest spot in the United States, with an average rainfall of 3 inches per year — use Colorado River water to grow thirsty alfalfa; under the law of the river, if they don’t use their allotment, they’ll lose their rights to it.
Americans got used to paying wee little for a whole lot of pristine water. At the same time, many utilities delayed the long-term capital investments needed to maintain their pipes and plants. In recent years, municipalities have begun raising rates to play catch-up. Since 2007, city water prices have risen at rates faster than the overall cost of living. Even so, the water sector reports it is not enough to pay for an estimated $1 trillion in anticipated repair costs for buried water pipes and growth-related infrastructure costs over the next 25 years.
Going forward, water infrastructure, supply and quality challenges intensified by the droughts, floods, temperature extremes and other influences of a changing climate will require new approaches to not only price, but also ethics: using less and polluting less, recycling more, and sharing costs among all users. At the local utility level, higher prices and tiered price structures, in which households that use more pay more, are both working to encourage conservation.
It's time we put an end to the myth of cheap and abundant clean water and recognize the value of one of our most precious resources.
Jennifer Quinn is central Pennsylvania outreach coordinator for PennFuture and is based in Harrisburg. She tweets @QuinnJen1.
