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Off Topic: California Water
Many of my neighbors are water pigs, with green lawns and extensive landscaping (on large lots) in arid California. Since they averaged massive water use over the past year, they get to keep using hoggish amounts of water, regardless of family size or appropriateness of landscaping, albeit subject to a 33% mandated reduction as is everyone.
I have no front or back grass lawn, just olives and oaks and scraggly weeds and some badly stressed redwood trees, a very few garden plants and fruit trees.
For years I was frugal with water. My frugality is now rewarded by getting screwed by the California Water Board: if I go over the measly 13 CCF allowance, I get hit with a big surcharge. My 5-person household gets no extra water vs two retirees with no children and extensive landscaping. How equitable.
My water-pig neighbors are probably using 50 or 100 CCF vs my 13 CCF, but since they averaged high use the past year, they get an amount of water commensurate with past usage.
Not commensurate with living needs: whether they have a family or not has no bearing. Whether they have wasteful water-sucking plants has no bearing. This is government at work with its usual ' pick winners and losers' dystopian way, applying neither rules of fairness nor allowing a free market to function, but instead rewarding Water Pigs. If there is to be no free market, then the water allowance ought to be based on family size, not past usage for irrigating some absurdly extensive landscaping in an arid climate (which seemed wasteful 20 years ago no less than today).
It will probably cost me an extra $200 to save my redwood trees due to surcharges, while my Water Pig neighbors use many times the water at lower rates. Thank you, Governor 'Brown'.
