Glennon Transcript 2

1.

Rate Increases

The money’s going to come from citizens, and it’s going to be built into the rate structures, and I actually think that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. 2.

Change Rate Structure

But the truth of the matter is right now we don’t pay for water; what we pay for is the delivery of water, the treatment of water, the cost of the utility in providing the water; there is no commodity charge for water itself. That has to change. 3.

Reform Water Policy

We Americans are spoiled. We wake up in the morning, we turn on the tap, and out comes as much water as we want for less than we pay for cell phone service or cable television. That has to change if we’re to really reform US water policy. 4.

Metering

The thing we need to do in the existing rate structure, we can encourage conservation. Right now, many communities around the country have no meters. People can use as much water as they want for no charge whatsoever, and the results of that are catastrophic. For example, the city of Fresno, California, has no meters; its citizens use, on average, 300 gallons per person per day. The very next door city, Clovis, has meters; their citizens use 200 gallons per person per day. So it’s very dramatic--just a simple step of putting in meters and making people aware of what they’re using and beginning to charge them for it. 5.

Block Rates

In fully one third of American cities the rates that are used are declining block rates, which means that the more you use, the less you pay for that final unit of water. Well, that doesn’t encourage conservation, it encourages use, so we need to have increasing block rates, and the rates need to be seasonably adjusted because that’s when you’re going to get the most bang for the buck. 6.

Discretionary Uses

Because the truth of the matter is, people don’t take more showers or wash more clothes in the summer. What they do is they fill their swimming pools and they irrigate lush landscaping, and those are discretionary water uses, and when you have discretionary water uses, those uses should be ones that people pay for.

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7.

Charging for Water

Some people would say that this is immoral, charging for water; it would be like charging for air. I actually turn that exactly around. Precisely because water is not like air-because it is exhaustible and is finite--the government has an obligation to ensure that we citizens use it wisely, and governments across the country have failed this responsibility. 8.

Model States and Cities

Some states are doing a much better job than others, and some cities as well--the cities of San Antonio, Santa Fe, and Tucson--all have very aggressive water conservation programs--but some cities in California have not even begun to look at conservation, and in the middle of a drought you would think they would be aggressive about this, but instead they aren’t. 9.

Media Attention QA

Why do you think that your message is falling on such fertile soil right now, here in the US, that you’re getting a lot of media attention? I think people understand that there is a water crisis; this is not Chicken Little, this is real, and when you see that four different states in the last 18 months have denied permits for new power plants, even though we need more energy in the United States, people begin to understand this is not just an environmental issue; this is an economic issue. We may fret in the United States about running out of oil, but water drives the American economy; it lubricates the American economy just as oil does. 10.

Water Follies Book

And how do you compare the book that you originally wrote about the water situation in the US with this current book? Water Follies was an environmental book and it was a book about a very serious problem that remains with us--overpumping our aquifers--having dramatic and horrible environmental consequences. This book covers all aspects of water across the country, it includes the theme of water as critical to the economy, and it elaborates on the interconnections between water and energy, which I don’t think has been addressed in prior books. 11.

Heart Head

I certainly have the heart of an environmentalist; the head of an economist. I think economists these days are looked on with a certain amount of skepticism; they did so poorly in the crisis that we’ve been looking at, and I would like to think that I bring a little bit of rationality to it and maybe even bring the heart to the economy, rather than the head. Because the thing that economists don’t get is that there’s much more than

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rationality in figuring out how markets go. So when we talk about water, what I advocate for is government oversight of the market. I’m not a free market believer; in fact, there is no such thing as a free market. Markets depend on property rights, and property rights are created by the government, so when we start transferring water around, I want there to be government oversight. 12.

Regionalization

The Great Lakes Compact that was signed in 2007 by Mr. Bush is a good example of the Great Lakes states and the two Canadian provinces coming together to address water issues; that’s a good example. 13.

Reasonable Use

The Reasonable Use Doctrine is an oxymoron; it sounds reasonable enough, but what it does is it allows people to use limitless quantities of water so long as the use is beneficial. But given that every use is beneficial, that’s really no limitation at all. So the problem in most American states is this--if you think of our water supply as a giant milkshake glass, and you think of each demand or each well as a straw in the glass--what the Reasonable Use Doctrine permits is a limitless number of straws in the same glass. That’s the tragedy. 14.

Water Rich Areas

Well, some areas really don’t need to think about reuse now, if they’re truly water rich, but water rich today may not be so water rich tomorrow. When you think about global warming, population increases, and other substantial demands for new water, the time is now to think about future needs. 15.

Hardest Choice

I think the hardest choice is to come to terms with the fact that water is not like air--it is not infinite and inexhaustible--it’s finite and exhaustible. And once we get our hands around that basic understanding, then we can make the hard choices. 16.

Point of No Return

Absolutely, we are not past the point of no return, and in Unquenchable, I offer a menu of options, different things that we can do, to avoid the crisis, to avoid the catastrophe. A crisis is a time of opportunity, and right now we have many forks in the road offering us choices about how to proceed, and if we have wise counsel, if we have the moral courage and the political will to act, the crisis will not turn into a catastrophe.

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17.

Zany Technologies

Well, what’s a zany technology to one person is Nobel quality work to another. Engineering has its place--reuse of water, some conservation techniques, some desalination projects--those all require good engineering. But what I think we can’t do is to think that new dams, new wells, new diversions--those sorts of engineering problems-that kind of “business as usual” is a viable way out of this crisis. 18.

Recycled Water Price

Pricing of reclaimed water is a really dicey issue. I think that whether it should be subsidized and the rates that are charged for it depends a lot on the local community. If you don’t make it attractive to use, people who have water rights to other supplies, or access to other supplies, will use those supplies. 19.

Dust Bowl

No, we’re not heading into a dust bowl, but all the modelers of global warming say that some areas are going to get drier and some areas are going to get wetter, and that the storms are likely to be more intense in both places. What that means for the southwest is a difficult time because we have predictions that both the Sierra and the Rockies are going to have much lower snow levels, so the southwest of the US is looking at a very dicey water future. 20.

Sound Decisions

Americans will always make the right choice after we have explored all other options. 21.

Incentives

I think there’s a lot of things we can do to encourage conservation, but what I argue in Unquenchable is we need to use price signals, because we haven’t. Americans are spoiled; we pay less for water than we do for cell phone service or cable television. So if we want to encourage conservation, we need to raise the price for water. 22.

Scarcity

Some cities--such as Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Tucson, San Antonio--already have aggressive conservation programs. They have picked the low hanging fruit, so achieving additional success with conservation is going to be difficult. Other communities have made essentially no effort with conservation, and for them there is a great deal of opportunity.

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23.

Nexus Water - Energy

If you want to save water, turn off the lights. Virginia Tech researchers have found that a single bulb--incandescent bulb, 60 watts, that burns 12 hours a day--over the course of a year will use as much as 6,300 gallons of water. So go home and turn off the lights. 24.

Conflict vs. Apathy

That’s a choice of two bad things--wars or apathy. What we need to do is to realize that the supply is finite, and “business as usual,” which often includes litigating state against state, is not going to produce any more water. 25.

Brand Reuse

Well, I like Dan’s idea of doing away with the words “reuse” or “reclaimed”--finding some new word for it. I thought it was interesting that the people in Singapore call it “new water.” We need to do something to indicate that it’s not a lesser quality water. 26.

FAQ

The question that I’m most often asked is about desalination because it’s reasonable for people who are not in the water business to say, “Well, golly, the oceans are all around us; why don’t we just take the salt out of the water.” That’s the most common question. 27.

Personal Efforts

I try to be conscious about my own personal water use. I try not to drink bottled water, but it’s surprising at how many speaking events I’m given a bottle of water on stage, which immediately becomes a joke. I think what I’m most doing is I’m trying to go around and talk with people who are not as familiar as I am with some of the water issues, and hopefully, when they hear what I have to say, they will think about it and perhaps adjust what they do.

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