Forced to let gardens dry out

In the article One day per week watering schedule, published in Pasedonia Now, it is stated that in order to reduce the water shortage in Pasedonia, California, the municipality has placed restrictions on outdoor watering. Residents are currently only allowed to water their gardens and lawns once a week during the given time slot.

Instead of implementing a restriction to reduce water consumption of residences, using economic incentives may be more effective. There are several ways that this can be done involving incentives. For example, the municipality could evaluate their water availability and create a recommended limit of how much water each household should need to consume in order to sustain a common lifestyle. For every predetermined unit of water that is used over the limit a fee must be paid. If a household uses less than the limit, they would be given a payment for each water unit. Like the above, there are other possibly more effective ways that water consumption could be reduced.

There are several faults to the regulation that the Pasedonia government has put in place. The residents that are affected by the regulation of reducing outdoor watering may be unhappy that they are not free to water their garden when their plants need water. Because they are unhappy, residents are more likely not to follow this regulation. If this regulation is not properly enforced, it is likely that few people will actually follow it. People may feel like they are being told what they can and cannot do (which they essentially are) and this may make them unhappy. This regulation also may not affect everyone, as some people don’t keep gardens or have plants that a suited for a dry environment. Enforcing this regulation will not reduce their water consumption at all.

Also, due to the dry conditions experienced in California, outdoor watering does contribute to a large portion of water consumption in order for residents to keep their plants alive. The government may think that this would be an easy regulation to put in place because a person’s lifestyle will not be greatly affected when they need to reduce how often they water their garden. However, there are many more activities that consume a large amount of water. For example, fixing leaky faucets and plumbing joints saves up to 600 gallons of water per month for every leak stopped (Mono Lake). In order to really make an impact on reducing water consumption, the government needs to put limits on all activities that involve large amounts of water.

Using the process of economic incentives would be more effective in reducing residential water consumption. Residents would feel like they had more freedom because they have the ability to determine where they will reduce their consumption. For example, if watering their garden was important, they could fix leaky faucets instead. More residents would be happy and therefore would be more likely to follow this program. Using economic incentives would encourage people that don’t normally keep a garden to think about ways to reduce their water consumption. It would be more effective to have general restrictions on water consumption rather than specific restrictions on certain activities. This is also because if there are restrictions placed on several water consuming activities, residents may feel like they are so restricted that they have to drastically change their habits. However this is untrue because there are several simple ways to largely reduce water consumption. People may be more willing to participate in reducing their consumption if they know that they will get money for doing so. Most people would try to avoid paying a fine and therefore would be more willing to participate.

Providing an economic incentive would be effective because it would give people the freedom to choose how they would reduce their water consumption and many would participate if they were going to get a reward. Because many areas of California experience drought like conditions throughout most of the year, the pressing issues of water shortages are always being discussed. It is important to find a solution that will keep residents of the community happy, while also limiting their use of water. This is often a difficult task because people don’t want to change their lifestyle by reducing water consumption, but they also don’t want to run out of water.

Anonymous. (2009 November 1). Pasedonia Now. Retrieved 2009 November 12, 2009, from, http://pasadenanow.com/main/2009/11/01/one-day-per-week-watering-schedule-enacted