Clarity Blog

Halting development is not a solution to California’s water supply problems.

In recent weeks, the LA Times and LA Daily News have published spurious editorials using the current water shortage as an excuse to call for a halt to development. The papers insist that California simply doesn’t have enough water to support its growth, but both the building and the water industries understand this is not the solution to our water supply issues.

As a dedicated advocate for both of these industries, I wrote letters to the editor rebutting these paper’s claims, which were published and appear below.

Los Angeles Daily News, July 2008
click here for the original article

Unintended consequences

There are consequences to no-growth moratoria, so consider this:

Is a building moratorium needed? There isn’t a water shortage in L.A. County; if there were, we would have mandatory conservation and “blue-outs.”

What is the economic cost of a moratorium? Can the struggling home-building industry survive such an action? Will the moratorium extend to new businesses since they use water too? How will demand for housing be met?

What effect would a moratorium have on water supplies? The county is only issuing a few thousand building permits a year, versus well over 1 million existing homes. More water would be saved by encouraging home and business owners to conserve water – especially since new homes are more water-efficient than older homes.

- Laer Pearce

Los Angeles Times, April 2008
click here for the original article

To the Editor:

The Times’ editorial calls for an end to suburban development as a fix for our water problems, offering no better a solution than would be a call for the clouds to drop more rain. Neither is realistic.

People have a right to choose the suburbs, and their new suburban home will use much less water inside than an older urban home. As for lawn irrigation, which The Times rightly sees as a water-waster, solutions The Times refers to as “potential” already exist.

For example, some new master-planned communities already include water-recycling plants that deliver reclaimed irrigation water to yards. The Times editorial endorses the relocation of people into urban areas that generate more runoff and conserve less water than new subdivisions.

The better solution is to address infrastructure with a comprehensive water bond and let water districts and developers respond to conditions and regulations with ever more innovative approaches to acquiring and conserving water.

- Laer Pearce

If you have any comments or questions about the services Laer Pearce & Associates provides as public advocates for the development and water industries, please give me a call at 949/599-1212.

Laer Pearce is president of Laer Pearce & Associates, one of Southern California’s premier public affairs firms, specializing in regulatory issues and community outreach for the water and land development industries. For more information, please visit www.laer.com

Tags: Development, drought, growth moratorium, Water, water crisis, water shortage

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Development, Environment, Laer's Latest, Water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.