[nateberkopec]

The bit about Sacramento not having water meters is particularly mad.

Driving through the Imperial Valley was a big wake up call for me as to the dire state of the water situation in California. We are transporting water hundreds of miles to grow food in the middle of a desert.

The old incentives and laws are clearly not going to be enough for the future, particularly on the Colorado. As usual, no one acts until the crisis is here on our doorstep.

[skybrian]

The article is from 2009 and more water meters have been installed.

> [E]very customer within the SSWD service area will have a water meter by 2025 as mandated by State law. In February 2004, the Board approved a Water Meter Retrofit Plan which outlines the criteria used to determine when an area within the District will receive water meters. For more information on the Water Meter Retrofit Plan go to sswd.org.

https://www.sswd.org/departments/engineering/capital-improve...

> Sacramento County Water Agency has approximately 90% of our customers with water meters. We are currently on our last phase of new meter installation in Laguna with plans for completion by the end of this year.

https://waterresources.saccounty.gov/scwa/Pages/Water-Meteri...

[ruffrey]

The article is incorrect about the water meters.

I lived in Sacramento city limits for 6 years. We most definitely had metered water.

In fact I had a friend, also in sac city, who had a broken water pipe. It was underground and not visible. The bill for 1 month was over $3,000. It was metered. (Luckily, some grant program paid/reduced the bill)

[npunt]

Transporting water to grow food isn't default a bad idea, if growing in one place is better than another and makes up for the transportation costs. Growing in warmer climates means crops are less likely to be lost due to frost, and it allows greater variety of crops to be available at different times of the year.

Water management is a huge deal, and we're doing it terribly. Lots of variables to balance, not just water but also resilience to changes in weather, variety available in different seasons, efficient water usage, crop rotation & soil usage, etc. Hard to say definitively any given practice is absolutely good or bad without a broader context of where it fits in the overall package.

[jeffbee]

Why is it mad? From a system perspective, what benefits would they get from meters? Energy saving from not having to purify and deliver the water, granted. But from a state supply perspective all that water comes from and returns to the big river.

[jcrawfordor]

Well, most of the efficiency analysis of water systems relies on meters in some way. This makes fairly intuitive sense... if you don't have any tracking of what you actually deliver to the end-user, it's hard to know what the actual in-out balance of the system is. For example, one of the most important operational metrics for municipal water systems is the non-revenue water portion. This is the difference between flow out of the water treatment plant and cumulative meter readings---and it indicates water that is lost in several different ways, most significantly (in most cases) leakage throughout the distribution system. This can be very substantial, as much as 30% in poorly maintained systems. I see an article estimating the non-revenue water in Sacramento at 10%, which is not terrible but still higher than many well-run water systems. But what's really problematic is that a spokesperson for the water department emphasized that this is a rough estimate because of the lack of meters on about half of their user connections.

The lack of meters makes it basically impossible to perform a "water audit," a best practice for water utilities that helps to quantify and---more importantly---locate leakage and equipment problems that lead to non-revenue water. It makes reducing the non-revenue portion very difficult since there is no real accounting of where losses occur. This makes costs higher for everyone, and also means that some of the water extracted from the river is taking an uncertain return path that greatly increases risk of contamination by urban pollutants in the vadose zone. It also makes it difficult to quantify some non-return dispositions of water like evaporation, not only for the utility but for customers.

Indeed, the 10% estimate they are producing right now is based on modeling of river extraction and return rates and aquifer levels. So they are basically trying to estimate their non-revenue based on the difference between what they take out of the river and what they put back in, but that is very difficult and gives little information on where the actual problems are.

[Kalium]

From a system perspective, the system functions better when everyone is incentivized to measure and ensure efficient use. That water both comes from and returns to the big river in time does surprisingly little to mitigate the basic limits of how much water is going in and out at any given time.

[refurb]

You’re growing food in a valley with amazing soil and great weather. Seems pretty smart to divert water to grow crops rather than letting the water just run into the ocean?