You can have progressive water rates. Everyone gets X gallons of water at the current rate, then the rate goes up by 10 times. Then perhaps another 10x for the top 1% of water usage.
Not doing anything makes the situation worse for everyone, poor people included.
The good thing about a market-based approach is that it might allow for water to be obtained from means that are currently economically non-viable. Perhaps high-volume water users would happily pay 1000x current prices, and at those prices, desalination, or other alternate forms of water collection become viable.
You might be able to give water to poor people for free. If there was a system where a households using under a certain volume of water could pay nothing, in exchange for freeing up water to be sold to large purchasers who pay 10-1000x the per gallon price.
Rich people can afford to game those rules. We don't have a rulemaking system that doesn't eventually cede to lobbying where flat, even rules evolve into entire regulatory systems that favor the rich
> You might be able to give water to poor people for free.
This would be a lot more fair. Allocate a reasonably small minimum amount of gallons/month/person and that is very cheap (maybe not free). Then have increasing tiers of expensive and much more expensive usage. If someone wants to have an acre of lawn it should cost them millions a month instead of just thousands as today.
Unfortunately some water systems in California have almost gone in the other direction to discourage conservation. During the previous drought they encouraged conservation and everyone did. Then they complained about not making enough money because people conserved.
Instead of raising the top-tier consumption rates to compensate, instead they raised the base rates by a huge amount (base rate being the flat monthly fee they charge even if you use zero gallons). It's not almost $100/month just to be connected even if usage is zero. So a poor family who conserves a lot and barely uses water is still stuck with a huge bill.
Pretty sure this is by design when possible California prefers regressive taxes. Some good examples: gas tax, vehicle registration, highest sales tax in the country (7.25%) with most counties raising it even more, parcel taxes, etc.
Not doing anything makes the situation worse for everyone, poor people included.
The good thing about a market-based approach is that it might allow for water to be obtained from means that are currently economically non-viable. Perhaps high-volume water users would happily pay 1000x current prices, and at those prices, desalination, or other alternate forms of water collection become viable.
You might be able to give water to poor people for free. If there was a system where a households using under a certain volume of water could pay nothing, in exchange for freeing up water to be sold to large purchasers who pay 10-1000x the per gallon price.