California Fights Drought With Data and Psychology, Yielding 5% Usage Reduction

dcblogs writes with an article about hackers using technology to mitigate the effects of drought. From the article: "California is facing its worst drought in more than 100 years, and one with no end in sight. But it is offering Silicon Valley opportunities. In one project, the East Bay Municipal Utility District in Oakland used customized usage reports .... that [compare] a customer's water use against average use for similar sized households. It uses a form of peer pressure to change behavior. A ... year-long pilot showed a 5% reduction in water usage. The utility said the reporting system could 'go a long way' toward helping the state meet its goal of a reducing water usage by 20% per capita statewide. In other tech related activities, the organizer of a water-tech focused hackathon, Hack the Drought is hoping this effort leads to new water conserving approaches. Overall, water tech supporters are working to bring more investor attention to this market. Imagine H2O, a non-profit, holds annual water tech contests and then helps with access to venture funding. The effort is focused on 'trying to address the market failure in the water sector,' Scott Bryan, the chief operating officer of Imagine H2O."

Re:Ther eis no market failre in thw water sector

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The real use is farming for out-of-state sales. Industry is second. Home use is a grotesquely distant and minor third.

Getting the home user panicked and guilty and whipped up was a knowing, admitted strategy to try to get legislation passed. Mathematically pointless limit discs are part of this.

Save a few percent -- put off the need for growth a year or two.

Ya wanna do something useful? Make it legal for people who develop alternate sources to preen and waste water luxuriously, sans limit discs and with 200 gallon toilet tanks.

Re:They don't need to

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, we should let the free market sort it out. That way the water manufacturers will receive incentive to build more waters when the price of water rises to the level the oil companies are willing to pay to pump it into the ground to get $110 barrels of oil out.

Enjoy your bath at bottled-water prices.

Re:compare water usage with "average"?

[geekoid]

The industry takes the very seriously. You can bet people will point it out very quickly. I spent 8 years working with engineers and experts in that field. Like most trades, they like accuracy and professionalism with the engineers.

Residential use is a drop in the bucket

[masman]

I find residential usage citations vary from 5-13% of total California water usage. Let's say it's 10%. I'm having a hard time figuring out how cutting my usage by, say, a big 25% along with every other California resident is going to solve the problem when that represents maybe 2.5% of total water usage. Don't get me wrong, I see no reason to waste water unnecessarily, but I just don't get all the emphasis on residential usage when it's a drop in the bucket. What am I missing?

Re:compare water usage with "average"?

[Ex-MislTech]

The CA home user uses about 10% of the water, the other 90% is used by Agriculture and Industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]

Re:Reduce usage - pay more

[Ex-MislTech]

Yes 85% of water usage in California is Agriculture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]

Re:Manufactured Crisis

[asylumx]

You're being obtuse, and I can tell by your several posts in this thread that nobody, including me, is going to change your mind, but here goes anyway. The important thing here is not knowing the "right" water level in the aquifers, it's knowing that a trend toward less water is a bad thing for humans trying to use that water, which is fairly obvious.

Yes, irrigation systems help create farmland from land that was not previously suitable for farming, but there is lots more farmland out there that doesn't need irrigation than that does. Here in the midwest, farmers will often use irrigation systems but it is to prevent their crops from dying due to drought and generally is not intended to turn bad soil into good soil (although this does happen as well). It's a method of regulating water supply, not a way of terraforming.