So you have a city with a limited water supply. Let’s say, oh, Tucson, Arizona. Now if you have no water meters installed, you have no way of measuring how much any single household is using. You can’t implement a per-gallon usage fee.

You need a way to get the whole city to save water. You can try fines and penalties for lawn watering and such, but that is a pain to enforce. If you want to reduce your overall usage, keep reading. Otherwise, turn to page 41.

What you need is a city-wide incentive. Say for example, that you’ll drop the mil rate if usage drops below a specified threshold for a given period of time. Then publish that amount. Regularly. In everyone’s faces.