A Socio-hydrological Framework to Assess Rate Design for Urban Water Affordability through Drought
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Unaffordable water threatens water access in the United States, particularly for low-income households that struggle to pay the rising cost for water. In water-scarce cities, water shortages necessitate either expensive infrastructure development or costly emergency measures to meet demand, which in turn increase household water costs. Rate design plays a key role in determining whether these costs threaten water affordability for low-income households, but water utilities are often constrained by local and state policy in their ability to set progressive rates. Therefore, new approaches to design rates that optimize water affordability within the local legal and hydrological context are needed in drought-prone regions. To address this gap, we design a socio-hydrological modeling framework that fuses legal analysis, behavioral economics, and hydrologic modeling to assess the impacts of rate design on household water affordability. We demonstrate this framework in an illustrative application in Santa Cruz, California, where droughts threaten water supplies and California Proposition 218 deters public water utilities in setting progressive rate design. Initial results demonstrate that flat drought surcharges reduce affordability, particularly under increasing block rate tariffs. This framework can both help utilities design rates to improve water affordability in their socio-hydrological context and also illuminate the impacts of state policy on affordability outcomes.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 22, 2023 |
| Publication date | May 23, 2023; May 22, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Nayak, Adam |
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-8401-4599
(unverified)
|
|---|---|---|
| Contributor | Rachunok, Benjamin |
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6405-978X
(unverified)
|
| Contributor | Thompson, Barton | |
| Thesis advisor | Fletcher, Sarah |
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3289-2237
(unverified)
|
Subjects
| Subject | Water resources |
|---|---|
| Subject | Droughts |
| Subject | Rate design |
| Subject | Socio-hydrology |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Nayak, A. (2023). A Socio-hydrological Framework to Assess Rate Design for Urban Water Affordability through Drought. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/gh456qk0747. https://doi.org/10.25740/gh456qk0747.
Collection
Undergraduate Theses, School of Engineering
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