MV ESTF: Water: taxing groundwater extraction

[Mark Gilkey]

Water Team,

 

As you may recall, the Sustainable Quality of Life group proposed that the city tax extraction of non-renewable resources, and the only example that they (we) could cite was groundwater that was pumped beyond a sustainable level.

 

Some members of the steering committee criticized the recommendation.  If I interpreted correctly, their criticism was not primarily of the idea of taxing water (although James Kempf did criticize the idea, apparently based on a misunderstanding of the impact of a tax), but was instead primarily that if the SQoL group had only one example of a resource that is "mined" in Mountain View, we shouldn't try to generalize to a broader principle (of taxing extraction of non-renewable resources).

 

Among our possible responses are:

1) Remove the idea, which I think would be a mistake.

2) Narrow the idea so that it talks only about water, rather than trying to generalize.

3) Find another example (might not be possible, but we are thinking about it).

4) Turn the "groundwater tax" idea over to the water group, which would talk only about taxing groundwater, rather than trying to generalize to resources that don't apply to MV.

 

If we turn the idea over to the water group, we would recommend that the tax be a very steep tax on the amount of water pumped that exceeds the amount that can be pumped sustainably.  The goal, of course, is to raise the marginal price of water so that people are discouraged from using more of it.  This idea complements your idea of a 5-tier water rate.

 

Would you like to take our idea, either as a separate recommendation or as part of one of your existing recommendations (such as the 5-tier water rate)? 

 

--mgilkey

Mark Gilkey

 

[Marn-Yee Lee]

We currently have all the proposals we need and do not plan to take on new ideas.  You should definitely look into how to maintain this proposal in SQOL.

--
Marn-Yee Lee
beingsustainable.blogspot.com
busythinking.blogspot.com.