Ted Stroll: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District wants to mandate electric water heaters and says it “will avoid an estimated 37 to 85 premature deaths per year.”
The Santa Clara County Association of Realtors surveyed contractors who estimated costs per home at $43,950 to $224,000. Its figures rely on replacing stoves and dryers as well as water heaters and furnaces.
Let’s pick a random lower figure and assume the Bay Area Air Quality Management District ban will cost each home $12,000. If 120,000 homes need a new water heater annually, the cost will be about $1.5 billion every year. That is a lot of money to “avoid an estimated 37 to 85 premature deaths,” assuming there’s a basis for that claim.
What could we do instead with that amount of money?
One answer would be to spend $1.5 billion annually to remediate homeless encampments. Encampment fires are ubiquitous in Santa Clara County. San José Spotlight reported in February that “over the past year thousands of non-structural fires have been sparked by homeless camps, causing toxic fumes and safety problems for people and property.”
Stroll correctly points out that the opportunity cost of the mandates is whether there are better uses for the money.
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