Full cost of Calif. drought still being tallied
By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
Californians paid for the drought in many ways. Homeowners saw their water rates rise. Farmers sacrificed revenue when they idled fields.
And practically everyone spent more on electricity.
Californians’ electricity costs jumped by a combined $2.45 billion from 2012 to 2016 because of severe shortages of cheap hydroelectricity, according to an estimate released Wednesday by the Pacific Institute, an Oakland water policy think tank. The hydro shortage was one of the little-known effects of the just-concluded drought, said the study’s author and institute’s president emeritus, Peter Gleick.