I was visiting Palm Springs one year, late summer. I had assumed that since it was in the middle of the desert, that water use would be regulated.
But as I drove around over there, I was shocked to see massive lawns being watered in the middle of the day, and large amounts of water just flowing out from these lawns into the drains. Sometimes the giant sprinklers were watering the sidewalks and roads too.
What a waste of water! Speaking to a local, they claimed that due to some old water rights agreement, Palm Springs gets its water for really cheap and there is no incentive to conserve it. Sad state of affairs.
The whole system is a mess. As wasteful as it can be, all residential use is only a small fraction of water consumption in this region. An order of magnitude more is used to grow water intensive crops in the SW deserts, and those farmers are only paying on average 1/10th the price per gallon for that same water as people pay for their home use. In many cases the farmers are incentivized to not be more water efficient, because the old water rights can be use it or lose it. They are essentially being paid to waste obscene amounts of water.
Municipal use and waste get the most attention because they are by far the most visible use, but most policies there are just tinkering around the edges and hardly move the overall numbers.
Not Palm Springs but close enough, reporting in for the curious. I've been wastelanding for a few years now in an unincorporated rural township, lucky to be close to allegedly sweet aquifers, but the utility is definitely mismanaged to the extent that it's pretty doubtful if anyone really knows how much water there is. Gold-mining interests are not far away (hello arsenic?), lithium interests are probably looking for an angle. I'm no geologist but maybe an endorheic basin that collects the sweet stuff is good for that too. Anyone think any of this water is being tested with a dismantled EPA?
Anyway a water bill is about $40/month up to 8000 gallons, $3 extra per 1000g overage. About half of the base rate is claimed as "upgrade surcharge". Since it's practically unlimited for free, does that sound right to anyone? The neighbors seem to be feral ghouls about 200 years old, they definitely don't care much about any poisons or the town drying up and blowing away, so they are always YOLOing a honking great deluge of whatever juice is still left into all different kinds of stupid inappropriate leafy greens but fuck it, you know? The pentagon is looking to restart nuclear testing in the backyard anyway so those of who still aren't irradiated yet can look forward to that!