E-mail Sherry Listgarten About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving a... (More) About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving and how they want to respond, and will feel comfortable asking questions and exchanging comments on the topic. It is important that we develop a shared understanding of the basic science and impacts of climate change, to make sense of our actions and policy options going forward. My background is not in climate science, and I'm not even particularly green; my hope is that helps to make this blog more relatable. I studied math and neurobiology on the east coast before moving out here in 1987 for grad school in computer science. After working in the tech industry for about 25 years, I retired a few years ago to better align my time with my priorities. I love spending time outdoors, and feel deeply our responsibility to this incredible planet that we call home. (Hide)
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For less expensive water, you can pick up free recycled water if you live in Palo Alto. There's also Purple Pipe, even if there is a waiting list. To save a little there is always effort involved.
Looking at the price of water alone is like a blind man holding the tail of an elephant, you are missing the larger picture. If you want to get the larger view of residential water usage, you need to look at the per capita usage in each city along with the climate in each city, housing density, water prices and water sources. Here is an article that puts some of this together: Web Link Perhaps your next posting can give us a better picture of residential water usage and answer some questions like do higher water prices really reduce water usage or is it something else?
Sherry: I applaud your data gathering & highlighting issues in our region. As stated, our water issue is both complex & probably the greatest threat. The cost of water can be a deterrent to excess usage, but the "mega-rich" in the area are not impacted economically. Several keys are to: a) Insist that our State "Servants" (Berman & Becker) actually take action in building more water storage (we hav only destroyed & not built water storage for ~ 50 years) b) Educate residents on landscaping, Grey Water, & other options to save water (Educate & not legislate) Also, you would do us all a great favor IF you apply your data skills to comparing the local PG&E rates (Electricity & Natural Gas) to other localities. You will find the price comparisons per KWH & Therm to be shocking! Compare Menlo Park's PGE rates to: - Palo Alto - Sacramento - Southern CA - Nevada - Oregon - Washington - Pennsylvania - Other states Our residential prices are astronomical compared to other locations & the cost difference is totally based on CA's PUC & CA "Public Policy". Thanks!
As with so many other issues recently, Los Altos seems to be the home of no muss no fuss good governance :) Los Angeles is also famously distant from the sources of water it uses (famous movies have been made about this!); is Hetch Hetchy really an expensive source compared to LA's or even local well farms?
Instead of building the amazing $100B “train to nowhere" in the Central Valley, I sure wish the state had built a few more water reservoirs in the past fifty years. We have twice the population as we had back in the mid-70s when the last one was finished.
It makes sense to me to have an extremely valuable commodity (water) that is decreasing in availability (drought) be priced so as to reduce its use. It doesn't appear that voluntary reduction requests have been successful.
These are great comments, thanks! Before I address them, I want to just repeat that the thing that really bugs me about Palo Alto’s water rates is there is zero accommodation for green landscaping. If you look at Mountain View's water rates, Palo Alto’s are very similar to their rates for multi-family homes (i.e., homes without any need for irrigation). Both cap the low-cost tier at 6-7 CCF. But only Mountain View provides a significant allowance for landscaping at single-family homes. A single-family home in Mountain View gets 15 CCF of lower-cost water. A Palo Alto home gets 6 CCF, whether or not it has a yard. Menlo Park’s rate structure is different but with similar effect. The city builds in a second tier that allows for lower-cost water for irrigation. Any Menlo Park home gets 12 CCF before jumping to the highest priced tier of water. Why is Palo Alto’s water pricing so anti-planting, in what is supposed to be a tree-friendly and yard-friendly city? It’s perhaps no wonder that so many trees have died during the drought. It is pricey to water them, 55% more than Mountain View ($10.96 vs $7.09 per CCF) and 30% more than Menlo Park ($10.96 vs $8.40 per CCF). Yet all three cities get almost all of our water from Hetch Hetchy. Maybe a better title for this post would have been "Tree-friendly Palo Alto charges 30-50% more to water trees." Dang. Okay, I got that off my chest, now onto your comments… @CyberVoter, you may be interested in this post that I did last year on electricity pricing. California’s prices are way too high and I am confident that something will change to better align prices with costs, make pricing more equitable, and encourage use of cheaper (e.g., midday) electricity. I may do a post on the possibility of real-time electricity prices soon. @Mondoman, Los Altos has a pretty different source of water than Palo Alto, so I think Mountain View is the better apples-to-apples comparison here. So apologies for omitting that data from my blog post! @Walter, I am rubbing my eyes in disbelief that you wrote an actually relevant comment. Now if only you would stop liking your own comment repeatedly, we’d be getting somewhere. IMO, prices are policy, and California’s water prices are all over the map. So I agree with @Bob that we need better pricing for this precious commodity. Someone sent me an email saying that Vegas prices its water at $1.05 for the first 9 CCF, and $1.87 for the next 9. With their low service charge (around $14), it’s something like $40 for 18 CCF in the middle of the desert, compared to $197 in Palo Alto. Unbelievable. I should clarify that the rates cited in this post are for 3/4-inch meters and single-family homes. Prices in some cases are somewhat different for multi-family homes, though often there is no distinction. Finally, Palo Alto has done some thinking about distributing recycled water for irrigation. But it doesn’t seem to be intended for houses. Maybe as blocks go all-electric, we can repurpose those gas lines as conduit for recycled water. I can dream… Anyway, thanks for the great comments.
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Register today to support local nonprofits The 38th annual Moonlight Run and Walk is Friday evening, September 9. Proceeds go to the Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund, benefiting local nonprofits that serve families and children in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. Join us under the light of the full Harvest Moon on a 5K walk, 5K run, 10K run or half marathon. Complete your race in person or virtually to support local nonprofits.
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