Conservation can begin in pocketbook

Want a sure-fire way to get Carson City residents to cut down on their water usage? Raise rates.

Let's face it, nobody wants to pay more for their water. But Carson City residents are getting the best bargain in Northern Nevada, paying less than half what customers of the Truckee Meadows Water Authority pay and significantly less than other nearby municipalities where meters are installed.

That's a great benefit, except when water runs short like it is now. At 90.9 cents per 1,000 gallons for some of the heaviest water users, it's a bargain. In Reno, they would be paying $2.43 per thousand gallons.

There are many ways to justify water rates, and the best is to simply recover the cost of the service and plan for future improvements. Setting artificially high rates to force them to conserve isn't necessarily a good policy.

However, rates can be structured to better reward the people who are using little water. Residents who use a lot of water should be soaked, so to speak, on their bills.

At 20 million gallons a day, the rate Carson City is using water so far this summer, it works out to about 360 gallons a day for every man, woman and child in the city. That's a lot of water.

However, when you consider many residences have no lawn, and a substantial number of homes in some neighborhoods are xeriscaped, it becomes obvious some people are using far more than their fair share.

It isn't strictly a dollars-and-cents issue, either. This week on any given afternoon, lightning strikes could start a wildfire on Carson's west side, where the reserves are lowest. Heaven forbid that water not be available to protect homes.

The current crisis will pass, we hope, without such a disaster. For future summers, though, it's worth city supervisors examining the rate structure to give the biggest breaks to those who conserve the best.