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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

You have a point. I just thought water bottlers like Nestle, who continue to use CA water for bottled water, are considered different from agriculture.

Besides I feel that people are missing my main point, which is what's wrong with going after low hanging fruit? Reducing our water intake in the form of lawns and in the bathroom is neither a major inconvenience nor is it a financial burden. In fact, it saves people money.

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So we are going to inconvenience the largest population, smallest demand base? How is that low hanging fruit? Even if the cities disappeared, and thereby California's population, there would still be a water issue from AG alone.

I don't mean literally exporting water, I mean growing water-intensive crops and then exporting those. Same effect.

Low hanging fruit mean the most impact for least effort. You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people so that a few can avoid any changes at all. We should just charge more for water for both residential and agricultural use and let people vote with their dollars on how big of an inconvenience it is to them.

> You are talking about inconveniencing almost all the people

That's the thing, it's not a huge inconvenience. I'm not handy and I was able to easily install devices to both the shower and toilet to reduce water usage. This law would also force home owner associations to cut down on water waste for lawns. I really don't see the inconvenience unless I'm missing something.

> We should just charge more for water for both residential and agricultural use and let people vote with their dollars on how big of an inconvenience it is to them.

I totally agree. I'm just saying that a step in the right direction is better than nothing at all.

We are not talking about a huge inconvenience, but we are also not talking about a huge effect. If we want to have a significant impact we can either have almost everybody cut their usage in half, or have a few cut their usage by a few percent.

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