LeakBird

I finally got to catch David Zetland in person the other night, at the Black Rocks Arts Foundation (BRAF) on 3rd St.  The theme was “Elemental Interactions: Water” and Mr. Zetland opened with a 23-Minute talk, which I was able to film with my Flip camcorder.

I’ve broken Zetland’s talk up into three 7-minute parts:

Part 1 (7:02)

Part 2 (7:30)

Part 3 (8:12) – Q & A

One thing I thought I’d share is that Mr. Zetland is writing a book on water for a general, interested audience — I look forward to learning more about this development.  Since I’ve been reading Zetland’s blog, I’ve often thought he should write a book!

In case you didn’t know, Mr. Zetland wrote his dissertation on the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.  Several months back, on 9/11 last year, he had a great guest Freakonomics blog post, “Oil and Water“.

If you don’t already read his blog, Aguanomics, you should!

Mr. Zetland made four key points on water:

1. Water Rates/ Costs/ Prices: Water is too cheap.  It’s a monopoly (this ties into key point #4) that’s regulated to be too low in price.  Prices absolutely must rise.
2. Water Quality: We just don’t know what’s going on with our water quality.  We’re supposed to trust our water managers, but sometimes they err.  It’d be great if we tested our water quality ourselves, b/c there’s a conflict of interest.
3. Groundwater/ Fresh Water: We don’t really know what’s going on with our groundwater, or if we can even call it ours. ;-)  We don’t know how much of it there is.  We don’t know to what degree it’s contaminated.  We don’t know whose water is whose.
4. Not a Matter of Public Water Vs. Private Water: It’s a matter of monopoly, incontestably.  That’s the problem.  And Mr. Zetland dives into this a bit.  In the past he’s referred to the “monopolistic utility“.  There needs to be community oversight.

Some other points he made were:

• Oppose rationing, support pricing
• Watch your water manager
• Do not have an irrigated garden. Let your garden live on rain alone

Please let me know what you think!

If you are interested in How You Can Increase Your Cash Flows by $2,500.00 Every Year and Never Pay for High Water Bills Due to Your Tenants’ Running Toilets, sign up for our Free Report here.

Abendigo Reebs is the VP of Business Development for LeakBird Industries LLC in San Francisco, CA. He may be reached by email at ben@leakbird.com

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