Veiled Water Wonk Wars: Robert Stavins Vs. David Zetland on Water Conservation Pricing (LeakBird)

Mar.18, 2009 in Water Rates

David Zetland of Aguanomics and Professor Robert Stavins, Director of the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard, were “on the same page“ with regard to water conservation pricing after Professor Stavins wrote a recent op-ed for the Huffington Post. Until Stavins took a slightly different tack on two water pricing misconceptions.

In his first piece, Professor Stavins echoed that “as reservoirs falls, prices should rise“, saying the same thing as David Zetland did in his Forbes piece, “The Water Shortage Myth“: Want more water? Pay for it.

Although Zetland has been actively blogging about water as an undervalued commodity and how water “prices should be aimed at reducing demand” for a couple of years, I found it disappointing, if not irresponsibly so, that Stavins should fail to mention Zetland’s work or pay him any homage.

Stavins, however, promised to follow-up with another piece on “better water pricing“, so I hoped that in this piece perhaps he would acknowledge Zetland’s work, or at least lay down the planks of his philosophy on water pricing, so as to set him apart from Zetland.

Well, let’s just say that Stavins succeeded in significantly diverging from Zetland’s point of view on two issues when he delivered the promised essay entitled, “Misconceptions about Water Pricing”.

At first, Stavins discussed the “principle” of his former essay: I wrote about how — in principle — price can be used by water managers as an effective and efficient instrument to manage this scarce resource.

He then went on to say that empirical evidence does support price-approaches to water conservation. These two notions do not differ from Zetland’s.

However, he stated in Water Price Misconception #3 that increasing block rates or tiered water rates provide no incentive to conserve water. In other words, they fail to reduce water demand. This completely contradicts evidence that Zetland has produced, such as case in point Santa Barbara in the 80’s during the big California drought when they implemented very steep block rates, which resulted in a steep reduction in demand for water.

Stavins said that Water Price Misconception #4 is the notion that “where water price increases are implemented, water demand will always fall.” Stavins said that there may be other factors, such as a population explosion, which continues to strain water demand in spite of price increases. If anything, this is something of a moot point, undercutting his principle notion that raising rates effectively conserves water because customers use less of it. Population and climate change aside, this is about each individual customer using less become a lot more of it is going to also cost a lot more!

I think that these last two so-called misconceptions were actually veiled shots at the work of Zetland. I think Stavins should at least acknowledge the work of Zetland. Zetland has been working a lot harder than Stavins on this very issue, and it’s a little arrogant for Stavins not to explicitly acknowledge his work rather than referring to common misconceptions that Zetland has held.

Stavins may be from Harvard, but IMHO, Zetland has a powerful message to deliver too, as well as a PhD in water, particularly with respect to Southern California and the Metropolitan Water District. And if you’re going to be a water wonk, you need to respectfully acknowledge the work of others. Others will be a lot more willing to listen to you if you’re humble, accepting and demonstrate respect.

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

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