Last month the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting published an exposé of the profligacy of water use in the drought-ridden state’s more affluent areas. One residence in the ritzy Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles consumed 11.8 million gallons of water in a year, enough for 90 residences.
They dubbed the unidentified owner as the “Wet Prince of Bel Air.” Not only have officials at the L.A. Department of Water and Power declined to reveal the customer’s name, they haven’t made him stop using so much water despite Governor Jerry Brown’s ordering mandatory water reductions in urban areas of 25 percent.
While the state has met its overall conservation mandate—hitting 26 percent in October—that Bel Air guzzler was hardly the only one—in Bel Air or elsewhere—according to Lance Williams and Katharine Mieszkowski, who wrote the CIR piece. There are hundreds of them. The reporters found that 365 California households had each pumped more than a million gallons of water during the year ending in April. A million gallons is enough for eight families a year, according to a state estimate. Of those households, 73 homes used more than 3 million gallons apiece. Fourteen used more than 6 million.
Drawing heavily on the CIR investigation, The New York Times weighed in with its own piece Monday. It’s not just that the rich are guzzling far more than their fair share of the water. Because there are more than 400 separate state water districts, both public and private, all of them making up their own rules about how the conservation mandate is to be met, many low-income residents are paying fines while many of the rich go unpenalized.
While the “Wet Prince” keeps pumping water faster than it falls from the sky, folks like part-time food-service worker Debbie Alberts in Apple Valley 90 miles to the east of L.A. has, among other things, torn out her lawn and stopped showering every day. She only washes clothes once a week and flushes the toilet every third use. This has cut her usage in half, to 178 gallons a day. The “Wet Prince” consumes 30,000 gallons a day.
But Alberts still hasn’t gotten herself below what’s required by her private utility, which has been mandated to cut customers’ total usage by 28 percent. Result: she’s been fined. Her last two-month water bill included a $79.66 surcharge, a hard hit for someone making $22,000 a year. From the Times:
[N]one of [Los Angeles’] top water hogs have been fined. Instead, they have been insulated from financial penalties: Because less-affluent residents of Los Angeles have conserved, the city is easily meeting its 16 percent mandated reduction and has had no need to force its wealthiest residents to pare back. (Districts where average use was higher were ordered to cut more.)
Under a 1997 addition to the state’s public records statute, water utilities are not required to release the names of water hogs and only one—in San Francisco—has done so under pressure from local media. The shaming generated by publicizing these names spurred a couple of prominent residents to cut back and keep themselves off subsequent lists of top users.
The state has issued a ton of public service announcements pressing Californians to do just as Alberts has done including flushing less and letting lawns go to seed. And it’s worked overall. But only two public water utilities are imposing penalties on mega-users, according to CIR: one in Oakland and the other in the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles. Other agencies have not done the same. They have, however, penalized people who hose down their driveways and water outdoor plants on a day not designated for it.
An official with the LADWP told the CIR reporters that the mega-users aren’t that big a problem because “the city’s top 100 residential customers account for only about two-tenths of one percent of L.A.’s total usage.” Another public servant who just doesn’t get it.
There’s a two-pronged response that should be launched in this matter. First, the state should mandate that all water utilities set a limit on residential usage after which there are graduated penalties—the more a household exceeds the usage limit, the higher the per-gallon penalty. Second, that law allowing utilities to keep the names of their biggest water hogs secret ought to be done away with. If mega-users affected by such a law don’t like having their wanton use of water publicized, there’s a quick and simple fix for that. Use less.