Or just raise the price of water to a market level and let things work themselves out. people waste and act irrationally when they get something for less than it should cost.
1) Raise the price of residential water until the cities can buy the water from farmers.
2) Raise the price to curtail use until cities can operate within their existing supply
This doesn't work well for something which is required to support life and a scarce resource.
The result would be that the very rich still continue to water their acre of front lawn, wasting a lot of water on something nonproductive because money is not an issue. Meanwhile poor and middle class people get priced out of being able to afford basic usage of water to live.
Actually free markets do very well for that. Free market farming in the US in 1800 was the first economy to provide a consistent food surplus.
As a counter-example, no country or society has ever managed to feed itself with collective agriculture. They always wind up starving and eating each other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
It seems to be halfway between a commune and a corporation.
Today's major consumers, on the other hand, don't present a way to capture the revenue like that, while still using the water in ways that are still nonproductive from a "why do we have to do this here" standpoint.
We will have a housing and water crisis as it will bring investors and speculators. It has destroyed oil prices, housing, land, etc.
Our market is a sham. Tying essential life-giving water to it was a mistake.
I don't disagree with the market being a fancy BS system to separate the working class from the wealth or anything, but you can't let your politics colour your perception in arenas you know nothing about. Otherwise you are ironically furthering the exact politic you probably hate - emotionally driven
Not doing anything makes the situation worse for everyone, poor people included.
The good thing about a market-based approach is that it might allow for water to be obtained from means that are currently economically non-viable. Perhaps high-volume water users would happily pay 1000x current prices, and at those prices, desalination, or other alternate forms of water collection become viable.
You might be able to give water to poor people for free. If there was a system where a households using under a certain volume of water could pay nothing, in exchange for freeing up water to be sold to large purchasers who pay 10-1000x the per gallon price.
> You might be able to give water to poor people for free.
This would be a lot more fair. Allocate a reasonably small minimum amount of gallons/month/person and that is very cheap (maybe not free). Then have increasing tiers of expensive and much more expensive usage. If someone wants to have an acre of lawn it should cost them millions a month instead of just thousands as today.
Unfortunately some water systems in California have almost gone in the other direction to discourage conservation. During the previous drought they encouraged conservation and everyone did. Then they complained about not making enough money because people conserved.
Instead of raising the top-tier consumption rates to compensate, instead they raised the base rates by a huge amount (base rate being the flat monthly fee they charge even if you use zero gallons). It's not almost $100/month just to be connected even if usage is zero. So a poor family who conserves a lot and barely uses water is still stuck with a huge bill.
They're not — they're supposed to suffer and die in a way that's "their fault" or that "couldn't be helped". Bolinas California is a prototypical example of this, where a complete ban on new water hookups has been the excuse to prevent any new housing construction at all since the civil rights era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolinas,_California#Bolinas_Co...
Not to mention the bandaid solution of subsidizing water only up to, e.g., the first thousand gallons per resident per month.
Water companies already charge gallon prices by usage today, just not to any deterrent extent.
Any time there is a minimum price on something, people who cannot afford that price won't receive that thing. When that thing is water, they will die. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Lockary v. Kayfetz is a good place you can start: https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1121751/files/fulltext.pd...
"With new construction halted and Bolinas's desirability unabated—or enhanced—after the moratorium, housing became pricier. In 1979, to create more affordable housing, the District allowed property owners to build second units on their property. Today [2007], property owners waiting for a chance to develop outnumber property owners with [water] meters, and homes can easily fetch $1 million."