[halfeatenpie]

Actual water resources researcher focusing on climate change here. My job is focused on what can we do to continue to deliver water to society under future scenarios (and what steps we can take to get there) from policy to infrastructure investments. The article doesn't present anything new for us but the problem is that the general public isn't informed.

While we're the oldest engineering discipline, remember that even until around the 80s people didn't think or know about groundwater contamination. They've always thought that sticking contaminated water back into the ground would filter it naturally like magic. In the late 80s more and more people started to understand that's not how it works. Even then, these policies and ideas are still in the process of being accepted in developing countries almost 40 years later and even then "what else can we do? My son needs water now and he could get hit by a car tomorrow so this is a problem I'll deal with later."

The problem (as the article states) is that the issue is so distributed. We're talking about traditionally individualized solutions for a problem that needs a more coordinated solution. However, noone is willing to pay for that or considers other investments as "more critical" than major water projects (also many environmental groups aren't as risk averse as water utilities). I mean the biggest cost in water isn't the actual product but the transportation costs. We have water, we just don't have enough funds to deliver them everywhere in a sustainable manner at a price that people are willing to pay.

NAWPA idea was conceived even before we understood our environment. It's the wrong solution. I mean even 10 years ago we had a landmark article that changed the paradigm of how we decide policy and build infrastructure[0]. I'd never take NAWPA for anything now than the "grandiose-ness of the 50s", especially since that was during a "water resources renaissance" in the United States where even crazy ideas were taken seriously.

[0] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/CLEE/Milly_2008_Science_S...

[quotemstr]

Why are so many water researchers opposed to letting the price of water vary and drive market-based conservation?

[halfeatenpie]

Great question! There's really no simple answer to this unfortunately also I don't think I'm the best person to answer this question, but I'll try my best!

Water is a basic human right. In most countries, water is a public good that the government subsidizes and, to some extent, the market is adjusted to allow vulnerable households to afford the resource as well. If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in many locations the poor and underprivileged have a considerably less access to this vital resource (some won't get any). An example of this can be seen in India. Many districts there suffer from intermittent water supply (where the local piped water comes at irregular intervals instead of continuously). These people might not be able to shower regularly and they aren't given a schedule of when the water will come, so they can't schedule their day or week. Many of these people might even have to leave work for a day (losing that income and economic productivity) and jump out to fill up their water tanks in their homes. As they don't know when the water comes (no regular scheduling), this uncertainty can be nerve racking and (even if you're trying to stretch it out to last) may not be enough to last your family until the next "supply". In these cases, you call in a water tanker to refill your tank but even then you don't know if it'll come.

On the tanker truck company's side, they don't want irregular domestic clients, they want more regular commercial clients (because the total customer value is much higher, you get more money from those clients than a household that needs a one-offer). So those companies aren't really incentivized to service residential clients. So if another call comes in, those commercial clients would take higher priority than those vulnerable households.

Those solutions don't really help this problem, and this problem is just going to grow for the foreseeable future. Not exactly what I'm talking about, but IWA recently published an article about how many cities are shifting from 24/7 to intermittent water supply solutions [0], and if this becomes irregular and the system starts to fail, then this will just keep that problem growing. One of the projects I'm involved in works on trying to solve this exact problem and we recently got some support from the US National Science Foundation as well as the Gates Foundation. However, there's still a long way to go. (Sidebar: Anyone want to give us more funding or help? Send me a message!)

[0]: https://iwa-network.org/running-out-of-water-cities-shifting...

[nshepperd]

Surely water security is also a basic human right, and that is directly impacted by destructive consumption subsidies.

> If we have a 100% free market-based solution then in many locations the poor and underprivileged have a considerably less access to this vital resource (some won't get any).

If we set water prices to something sane, how much cash do we have to give the poor to leave them in the same financial position?

Surely it can't be much: domestic water usage is but a fraction of agriculture and industry, and the number of poor which couldn't afford water is but a fraction thereof.

[drablyechoes]

Presumably because they do not want huge segments of the human population to die because they are unable to afford access to the literally most basic necessity for life on this planet.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Food costs money; why should food and water be managed differently? (Presumably, with subsidies or such as needed)

[halfeatenpie]

Funny thing. There's a research topic called virtual water that focuses on the trade of water through food or other "products". Look it up! It's really interesting! It talks about the trade of water most commonly through food products! (How transporting an apple from California to Pennsylvania means you're exporting and importing water!)

It's a new topic that's only really taken shape and impact in the last two decades!

[romaaeterna]

I'm sure that your job is very wonderful, but the NAWPA post was not entirely serious, and I hope that a water resources researcher would realize that first of all. For one thing, it's not a municipal drinking water project, it's an irrigation project to deliver large amounts of water to (potential) cropland in the American Southwest.

It's really about (massively) increasing US (and therefore world) food production. If first world municipalities run out of water, people can always move. If the third world runs out of food due to price increases, they die in very large quantities. And I promise you, human beings will certainly decide to destroy a very great deal of habitat before letting a few billion people starve in the face of climate change.

[halfeatenpie]

See it as you want, but that's a pretty negative view on the entire situation. We as humans are very resilient and we'll continue to find a way to make it through. This also isn't a localized issue but an international issue with localized variable impact. It doesn't exactly work like the way you described... But hey you do you!

I'm aware that NAWPA post wasn't entire serious, but the thing is that similar to how people were investing in companies during the .com bubble that had no clear monotization plan, Water also went through a similar phase. Municipal water and irrigated water are very different topics I agree, but from the direction I work in we look at them in a similar light. There's another project our organization is involved in that is focusing on investments in dam infrastructure in Africa to help deliver water for farmland irrigation. The specific context is different, but water is water, and the issue with quantity and transportation is present (and common) on both sides.

Again, do what you want or believe what you want, but the reality of the situation is there.

[romaaeterna]

> Municipal water and irrigated water are very different topics I agree, but from the direction I work in we look at them in a similar light.

Yet another strange, nearly zero-information post. Another post you made the other week sheds more light on this job of yours:

>I work in critical infrastructure planning. My organization builds software in R, Python, and other programming languages customized for these major organizations.