Perched on California’s Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is known for its surfing, beaches and boardwalk. Less idyllic is its vulnerability to drought, which puts the beach town on the frontlines of a growing water crisis facing communities around the world as climate change intensifies.
As the area gets hotter and drier, Santa Cruz could see median household water bills nearly double to as much as $120 a month from $64 by 2050, according to new research published in Nature Sustainability on Wednesday.
These price increases reflect the need to build new infrastructure to expand the local water supply.
Water costs in the US have already been rising faster than overall consumer prices. Unlike conventional forecasts of water rate increases, which tend to extrapolate from historical trends, the study focuses on the costs driven by climate change alone.
“In hotspots in the US where cities face similar vulnerability from water stress, water bills might go up even more than current projections,” says Sarah Fletcher, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and a co-author of the paper.
