Water Requirements or Water Demands?

Abstract

T HE SUPPLY of high-quality mu nicipal water has developed, princi pally in the last century, into one of the largest industries in the US. At the present time, more than 170 million Americans are served by public water systems. In terms of the size and value of the physical plant necessary to ren der that service, the water-utility in dustry is second only to the electricpower industry.The current replacement value of public-water-supply systems through out the country is in excess of $50 bil lion, which is equivalent to an invest ment of $339,000 per employee, sub stantially higher than the comparable statistic for any other industry. (Re placement value of water-utility facili ties was obtained from an AWW A Staff Report,1 adjusted to 1970 by the authors. Utility employment ratios were obtained from Seidel and Cleasby.2 ) The capital-turnover ratio (gross annual revenues divided by to tal investment) has been estimated at 0.2 in the water-utility industry, com pared with 0.3 for electric utilities, 0.4 0.6 for other utilities, 2.0 for manu facturing industries, and 4.0-6.0 for retail and wholesale trade enterprises.8A dominant economic characteristic of water utilities is, then, the large in-The terms "water requirements" and "water demands" are fre quently used interchangeably. In the language of economics, how ever, these words have special meanings. Here is the first of four articles by these authors that delve into water demand.

Community Identification Moderating the Impact of Financial Incentives in a Natural Social Dilemma: Water Conservation

“…This effect was highly significant in the field study, which is comparable to the results of previous research on water tariffs (Hankle & Boland, 1971) and theories on reward-performance contingencies (Eisenberger, 1992). That there was no tariff effect in the lab study might have to do with the relatively minor sums of money at stake (30 pence per earned point).…”

CONSERVATION PRACTICES AND ATTITUDES AMONG MARYLAND WATER SUPPLY MANAGERS1

“…Many of the conservation articles referred to in the intre duction are extensions of the pioneering studies on the effect of increasing rate schedules and higher prices on water demand carried out by individuals at Johns Hopkins University (see Hanke and Boland, 1971; Hanke and Davis, 1971; Howe and Linaweaver, 1967). These studies argue that increasing step or block rate schedules curb excessive water demand particularly among customer classes with large discretionary uses such as detached residences.…”

State-of-the-art summary of incentives for residential water conservation

“…A California report (Nelson, 1977) concludes that household savings on the order of 30 percent can be achieved as a result of metering residential customers . Hanke and Boland (1971) report on the experiences of the water utility in Boulder, Colorado.…”