The next crisis for California will be the affordability of water.
Not water, the rising cost of which is looming as a defining economic problem in coming years.
In California and across the nation, concern about water affordability has been spreading, with good reason.
Rates in Los Angeles rose by as much as 71% from 2010 to 2017, according to a survey by Circle of Blue, a water news website.
The rate rises with income; a household earning between 100% and 150% of the poverty level will pay no more than 3% of income for those services.
Finding ways to ensure affordability is an especially acute problem in California, where water service is provided by a patchwork of more than 3,000 city, county, mutual and private agencies, some of which are too small to shoulder the burden of lifeline rates for their poorest customers.
“We have lifeline rates for electricity, weatherization, even telephones,” says J. R. DeShazo of UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, “but we do not have a statewide program that ensures that people have affordable water.” The recent drought, he observes, “has thrown that need into relief.” Indeed, the drought pushed the share of income devoted to water to 2.1% from 1.8% for households earning less than $25,000, according to a survey released this year by the Pacific Institute; for those earning less than $10,000, costs rose to 5.3% of income from 4.4%.
Meanwhile, the PUC has become concerned about the wide variation in low-income assistance programs offered by the water companies under its jurisdiction.
“If California does enact such a program, it would be out in front,” says Max Gomberg, who is overseeing work on the options at the state water board.
“No other state has done this.” The board, working with the Luskin School, has worked up several options and has aired them at a series of local hearings.