Opinion: Water market is playing unsustainable game of chicken
A Claremont friend of ours recently confessed, she is depressed if she sees a brown lawn, and she is depressed if she sees a green lawn. We think of our friend as reasonably well-adjusted, so lawns do seem to be the culprits here. Indeed, out for one of our walks on a Thursday evening — not a permissible sprinkler day — my wife and I see homes in our neighborhood with the sprinklers going full blast, with a steady flow of water running into the street. The L.A. Times recently interviewed Max Gomberg, who resigned as a senior manager with the California State Water Board out of his frustration over inaction in Sacramento on water. He described participants in the water market as playing a game of chicken, waiting to see who would blink first, taking us down an unsustainable path.
-Written by Stephen Marks, the Elden Smith Professor of Economics at Pomona College.