Who’s Really “Using” That Water

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David Zetland, the bad boy of water economics, offered up a fascinating argument the other day regarding the traditional argument that agriculture used three quarters of the water in the West. When a farmer irrigates her field, who is it who’s really the “user”?

When I use water to flush the toilet, that water only benefits me and is unavailable to others.**

Farmers, on the other hand, use water to grow products that benefit others. Put differently, we also use that water when we consume agricultural products.

So the right way to calculate “use” is not by looking at how much water one person (or sector) diverts but by looking at each participant’s share in the total benefit from that initial diversion.

For instance, say that a farmer diverts water to grow carrots. If he sells those carrots for $0.25/pound to the wholesaler, who sells them for $0.50/pound to the retailer, who sells them for $1.00/pound to consumers who value carrots at $2.00/pound, then we can say that the farmer and wholesaler each get 12.5% of the total value, the retailer gets 25% of the total value, and consumers get 50% of the total value.

So consumers are using 50 percent of “agricultural” water.

The numbers are merely notional here. It’s the underlying logic that’s important.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere, Aldo Leopold Edition

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I’ve been working for the paper on a piece about Aldo Leopold’s years in Albuquerque. It’s a setup for a conference next month, and an excuse to explore some of the issues Leopold’s legacy raises for use living in the desert Southwest today. Here’s a snapshot, from a walk around the University of New Mexico last week, where Leopold spent some of his early years:

But while Leopold might have a hard time recognizing the place, he would still recognize the birds. One of the central messages of Leopold’s work was that nature is not something that happens in far off places, but rather that it is all around us, and we are an integral part of it. For a story I’m working on, I had UNM ornithologist Chris Witt take me on a walk around campus Thursday morning. We saw Bushtits, Pine Siskins, a lovely little Ruby-Crowned Kinglet and the usual mass of American Wigeons and Mallards at the duck pond. He heard and saw an Audubon’s Warbler, though my eyes are not as quick, nor my ears as sharply tuned, as Chris’s.

Listen to Barb and Mary Ellen

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From Democracy for New Mexico:

My partner of 19+ years and I are aging. We’re dealing with a number of health problems. We’re aware that if Mary Ellen loses her job, my health insurance will end that day, because the vast majority of employers in New Mexico can’t, by law, offer insurance coverage to domestic partners. We’re trying to prepare for retirement down the road. We’re wondering if our relationship will be respected within the ER, intensive care unit or coroner’s office if something should go terribly wrong. We’re considering how one of us could cope economically and deal with inheritance and similar issues if the other should become disabled or pass away.

Now, more than ever, we need the legal protections that most of you reading this take for granted. Please do what you can to help that happen. Please consider this matter with your head and your heart.

Scarcity Rent and the Price of Water

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If OPEC priced its oil based on how much it costs to get it out of the ground, we’d be swimming in it right now. Or, more precisely, we would have been swimming in it, until we used it all up. The peak would have come long ago.

When the market prices oil, the cost is based on the scarcity, which is higher than the cost of production. You use less. It last longer. Won’t last forever this way, but this approach to pricing stretches out the resource a bit.

Water? Not so much, as this discussion in the city of Santa Fe exemplifies:

The City Council late Wednesday narrowly approved an 8.2 percent boost in base rates for each of the next five years, allowing water managers to execute a 10-year plan to upgrade and maintain the community system.

The pricing discussion here is entirely about how to meet the costs of delivering the water. Which here in the West we are using up at an alarming rate.

NM Brackish Water Rush Continues

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The rush to get in permit applications for brackish water drilling in New Mexico continues, as the state legislature considers a bill that would give the state regulatory authority. Staci Matlock reports in today’s New Mexican on more applications:

Private interests are rushing to tap lightly regulated supplies of briny water deep under New Mexico before the state can adopt new laws aimed at gaining more control over the valuable commodity.

On Monday, five companies with undisclosed ownership notified the state engineer that they intend to drill deep wells in the Santa Fe area and pump out up to 24 billion gallons a year.

Such wells will be expensive to develop as municipal water supplies because of the cost of desalination, but it is at this point an essentially unregulated source of water.

Is the Push for Regional Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Breaking Down?

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Shaun McKinnon had an item today on the push in the Arizona legislature to back away from the Western Climate Initiative:

A group of state legislators has started the process of undoing former Gov. Janet Napolitano’s climate change initiatives and their chances of success are probably good.

A bill has been introduced in the Senate that would block state agencies from adopting or enforcing any program or measure to regulate greenhouse gases without approval from the Legislature.

If the bill becomes law, Arizona would effectively drop out of a regional effort to reduce greenhouse gas levels, an initiative that put the state on the cutting edge of adapting to climate change.

The Legislature passed the same bill last year, but Napolitano vetoed it.

I posted today over on the work blog about efforts to get a climate change bill moving in New Mexico’s legislature, where it looks like the central argument by the bill’s opponents will be that there is no longer any need for state-level action now that we have a president who supports national climate change action.

Tobis on the Lawnmower Dilemma

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Michael Tobis models the lawnmower problem:

If you have a typical American house, you have a typical lawn in front of it, a lawn that is in need of occasional trimming. Unless you contract out for lawn services, you almost certainly own a lawnmower too. Most likely it has a cheesy, loud, polluting little engine.

You only use this for a half hour every other week, or 1/336 of the time. OK, you don’t want people mowing lawns at night, so say 1/168 of the available daylight time. So you and your 167 nearest neighbors own 168 times too many lawnmowers. If you could coordinate your lawnmowing, you would need to spend 1/168 as much on a lawnmower.