Cities and Their Vital Systems Infrastructure Past, Present, and Future (1988) / Chapter Skim
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12 Water Supply and Distribution: The Next 50 Years
12 Water Supply and Distribution: The Next 50 Years
Pages 258-277
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From page 258... ...
If the world would just stand still, most places could get by with the water now available or with the water that is in the process of being made available through a combination of conservation measures and improved management of available resources. Although some distribution and treatment facilities should be improved or replaced, state and local governments can probably finance the solution of more than 90 percent of the problem themselves (Congressional Budget Office, 19831.
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From page 259... ...
The protection of minimum levels of streamflow, concern for the quality of the drinking water supply, and increasing conflicts between the need to protect water supplies and dispose of toxic and hazardous materials add to the costs and complexity of maintaining adequate supplies of water for urban and rural settlements. Almost all of these problems can be solved through the usual incremental policy process.
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From page 260... ...
The highly uncertain estimates of this rise, a phenomenon that would profoundly affect infrastructure worldwide, range between approximately 20 centimeters (cm) and 200 cm by the year 2100.
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From page 261... ...
Urban development would also have to be limited to areas in which local surface water and groundwater supplies were adequate. If the transfer option were chosen, the cost would be substantial.
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From page 262... ...
POLLUTION AND SUPPLY The contamination of water supplies has been and still is one of the most serious environmental problems in this country. Since the enactment of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972 (Public Law 92-500; 33 U.S.C.
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From page 263... ...
We can probably look forward to more stringent standards for drinking water, increased monitoring and regulation by federal and state governments, and the development of new technologies designed to protect drinking water quality (Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 19841. Here again, it may be desirable to advance the development of costeffective seawater conversion technologies and apply them to other contaminated supplies.
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From page 264... ...
Cities appear to be adjusting to the depletion of their existing water supplies less by adopting conservation measures than by promoting the development of new sources of supply. We can expect continuing migrations to regions that will be vulnerable to water shortages as climate changes occur, particularly in the southwestern and mountain states and some of the coastal states of the Southeast and New England.
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From page 265... ...
interbasin transfers of water to meet municipal, agricultural, and industrial demands; and 4. restructuring of the water market and redesigning of the institutions that allocate water to regions and to users.
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From page 266... ...
Charging the marginal cost for new water services would, alone, probably not have much effect on urban development patterns. If charging the marginal cost for water services were combined with the use of marginal cost pricing for all new infrastructure, however, such a policy could be expected, at a minimum, to substantially reduce the level of public subsidies now provided to private development and to redirect some of the development pressure from raw land to areas with underused facilities, thus increasing capital productivity.
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From page 267... ...
CONSERVATION Conservation should be one of the highest priorities of any comprehensive management program, whether at the city, regional, or national level. In the urban context, conservation measures not only save and stretch existing supplies but may actually enhance them.
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From page 268... ...
The Metropolitan Water District, which serves most of southern California's urban areas, has been negotiating with agricultural users for rights to water that is now wasted. There is enough such water to meet the projected needs of the district for many years, even at current rates of use, and the district sees this water as a means of avoiding further ill-fated interbasin transfer schemes.
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From page 269... ...
Canadian opposition, combined with that of American environmentalists, resulted in a considerable scaling down of the Garrison project. For the immediate future, turf and environmental politics will almost certainly limit sharply the number and size of public interbasin transfers approved by state and federal water management authorities.
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From page 270... ...
Public agencies produce water directly or license private companies to produce it for municipal use. State law establishes the rights and priorities of users of natural and man-made bodies of water.
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From page 271... ...
This third dimension suggests that a major task for water policy is to restructure the water market in ways that make use of free market principles to increase efficiency in the system but that stop short of promoting or allowing the unrestricted consumption of reserves needed for the future. As noted above, this restructuring should have the result of inducing higher levels of conservation and improving allocations among users.
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From page 272... ...
Combined with rate reform, conservation measures such as taxes on waste, and marginal pricing for service to new development, a reduced federal role should reduce effective demand for water and thereby materially affect estimates of need. Law also plays a major role in the market for water and governs other behavior in water policy.
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From page 273... ...
After 2006 the state is authorized to purchase agricultural land and retire it from that use if conservation measures alone appear to be inadequate. These states are nibbling at the edge of a powerful legal doctrine that is as old as the Roman empire but that has not yet been broadly applied to water law, especially for groundwater.
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From page 274... ...
At the national level, Congress concerns itself with specific water projects while the President tries to develop a national water policy. The system is a classic case of distributional politics in which the decisions benefit a small segment of the population but do
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From page 275... ...
One promising model is the International Coalition for Land and Water Stewardship in the Red River Valley. This grass-roots association of citizens and governments in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba was organized in response to local frustration from trying to get the public agencies to coordinate their efforts in flood control, irrigation, and water supply.
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From page 276... ...
1984. Water law Public trust doctrine.
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From page 277... ...
1983. Effects of a carbon dioxide-induced climatic change on water supplies in the western United States.
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