New tools for law enforcement at hand. <\/a><\/p>\nThe water meter calls the water department on the cell phone to report excess usage, so they send public employees out to videotape offenders, as evidence to support an Excess Consumption ticket. This seems cumbersome and top-heavy to me. <\/p>\n
The water department already knows historic water consumption, there, and in dry climates around the world. It could calculate a Daily Essential for each category of user (residential, car wash, hospital, laundromat). The government could charge an affordable amount for the Daily Essential based on political considerations, and charge everything over that amount a ferocious Excess Consumption rate. Payment due in 10 days or we shut you off. <\/p>\n
No video evidence, no ticket, no phone call, no staff overtime. People would scream. But they\u2019d comply. And if they don\u2019t comply fast enough to alleviate the water shortage, raise the excess consumption rate some more. Eventually, even the McDonald\u2019s franchise owner is going to turn off the sprinkler rather than risk having his restaurant closed for non-payment of the water bill. <\/p>\n
Alternative plan: have the water meter stop the water flow when the Daily Essential amount is reached. Ideally the usage should be carried over so an underused amount will credit to the next day. This is not futuristic, it’s well within the range of current day technology. Sure, it\u2019ll cost a fortune to upgrade all the meters \u2013 but it\u2019ll solve the problem.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The ongoing debacle in the California water situation further proves the government is the absolute least effective way to allocate scarce resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: California is having water problems again. Too much demand, not enough supply. New tools for law enforcement at hand. The water meter calls the water department on the cell phone to report excess usage, so they send public employees out to videotape offenders, as evidence to support an Excess […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52555"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52557,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52555\/revisions\/52557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}