It seems an obvious fix: Adjust the utility rates so the more water you use, the more you pay -- with the numbers going up exponentially when you use excessive amounts.

I advocated for it in a column last month, when the governor first called for the three-minute shower. I figured there's nothing like a massive water bill to tweak the conscience and increase compliance with a statewide conservation effort during a statewide drought.

But here's the problem: Some people have more money than conscience.

So when the water rates go up, there will be those among us who won't save water to save money. Instead, some people will keep the water on while brushing their teeth or run a load of laundry for two or three items or luxuriate in 20-minute showers.

Why? Because they can afford to.

In fact, because the new rates are part of the area's solution to its water shortage, they can use plenty of water while feeling exempt from what should be a shared responsibility to conserve. After all, they paid the extra freight. They did their part when they cut the check for the water bill.

This is what happens when water becomes a commodity rather a resource that needs to be preserved, whatever our income.

Make water a pro-rated commodity and it becomes a bit like health care and justice: You get what you can afford.

Not to knock the market-driven approach entirely.

In a position paper, the John Locke Foundation argues that the law of supply and demand can apply downward pressure to consumption in two ways.

One, by charging more for increased usage, or demand (a strategy recently adopted by the city of Raleigh.) Two, by ratcheting up prices as the supply drops.

That might be worth a second look as part of a long-term solution to our water worries.

But with all due deference to economist Milton Friedman, if we wait on the market to resolve matters with a mere 60-to 90-day supply of water in the balance, we'll be -- gasp, cough, sputter -- flat out of agua by February or March.

Besides, prices would have to skyrocket to affect some water customers.

Despite all the attention given to water conservation recently, the number of gallons used is starting to creep back up.

Some folks are so eager to continue with an uninhibited use of water that they are actually bypassing municipal water systems and spending thousands of dollars to drill their own wells.

Anything to keep those manicured yards green.

Forget that wells affect the aquifers we (and our children and grandchildren) are counting on for the future.

Fact is, water is not like Doritos: Crunch all you want, we'll make more.

Instead, we need to start viewing water as a resource rather than a commodity.

When it's gone, it's gone -- at least until we line up new water supplies, or the desalinization plants get built.

Sure, at some point the rains will come, and the drought will end.

Until then, though, there's no way to pro-rate conscience. Some pocketbooks are impervious.