LeakBird

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Laissez-Faire My Water: Water Crisis a Service Crisis or Resource Crisis? (LeakBird)

Jan.25, 2009 in Public Works, Water Conservation, Water Crisis, Water Industry, Water Management

(Image Courtesy of CaliforniaGreenSolutions)

Is the water crisis a resource crisis or a service crisis? No matter what anyone says, each seems to fall on one side or the other. Frank R. Rijsberman claims the water crisis is both, but he seems to lean more toward a service crisis.

And opinions vary so widely on related topics, such as desal (more service than resource-oriented) and privatization (more resource than service-oriented), that often I feel like I’m in the war room, and become afraid to even have an opinion because many are almost doctrinaire, fully crystallized in their beliefs (and there’s nothing wrong with this).

For example, Maude Barlow says desal sucks all the life out of the sea, spewing back a combination of chemicals and dead aquatic life. And yet she ignores mentioning some of the amazing technological leaps that have been made in desal, e.g., in reducing the energy consumption. Because she’s so focused on the resource crisis, sometimes she may be missing the service crisis aspect of it.

I appreciate David Zetland’s approach, which is welcoming to myriads of opinion, yet informed by pure economics — his view seems to balance the two, however, he does seem to write more about the service crisis, because of the water management crisis we face here in California, where there isn’t really a shortage so much as mismanagement.

Without economics, socialism can quickly approach. Of course, there are the likes of great contemporary economists, such as Nouriel Roubini who seems to believe in more goverment intervention in markets, as opposed to less. It’s refreshing to see a Berkeley-habitating PhD, as in Mr. Zetland, come out against water rationing, against local and state intervention in water markets!

I’m a student of the water crisis, and appreciating all viewpoints, tend to side more with the likes of Mr. Zetland than Ms. Barlow or Mr. Rijsberman, when it comes to water markets. I lean toward the water crisis being part resource crisis and part service crisis. However, they’re both part of markets: I think we should get out of the way, and let the market make up its mind.

Laissez-faire in water markets, means letting water prices rise based on demand and the utilities’ need to stay in business! The market will self-correct — pure Austrian economics!

I’m actually a fan of Mr. Rijsberman and Ms. Barlow, I just don’t agree with everything they say.

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