Criminal Water Managers

This (via DS) is interesting:

The Truckee Carson Irrigation District and four employees were indicted today on charges including conspiracy to defraud the Bureau of Reclamation and falsification of records.

[snip]

TCID gets a bonus for operating the water delivery system more efficiently... They collected some 45,000 acre feet of water as incentive credits.

The indictment accuses the men of inflating water delivery efficiency data including by tampering with flow meters. It says they used those incentive water credits to pay back the Pyramid Paiute Tribe water owed from... earlier years.

So it appears that TCID owed water to the Tribe. TCID inflated efficiency (underreported use) to get credits (for REAL water) that were given to the Tribe.

Interestingly, these managers do not appear to have made personal gains from the scam. They just tried to double-dip, i.e., to "drink their water and sell it" and got caught.

[Has this story reminded you of Cap and Trade and carbon offsets yet? It should. Carbon taxes are also vulnerable to manipulation, but its harder when the tax is collected at source and no emissions credits are involved.]

Bottom Line: People respond to incentives, and their propensity to break the law increases when the gains from breaking the law do.