Editorial:
Each morning for the past few months, we have woken to hear weather news describing all of the snow storms and rain storms and associated flooding in most states east of the Rockies. And then the weather map shifts to the West Coast, and in particular California. The sad news is always the same – we are experiencing extreme drought conditions. I sit and wonder how we could move all of the water that is flooding in the Ohio River Valley to our very thirsty state, California.
Of course that is an improbable question. If there was even a remote way to divert the water, I am sure someone would have come up with the idea!
Governor Brown has issued an order mandating a 25% reduction in water usage by residents. Meanwhile the agricultural industry, which uses 80% of the water in California, will not face any restrictions on their water usage.
Following Gov. Brown’s orders, the Metropolitan Water District approved a plan that would cut regional water deliveries by 15 percent beginning this summer. San Diego County Water Authority receives about half of their water from the Metropolitan Water District, which is then distributed out to their member agencies.
What this all means is that if you have a green lawn it is going to cost you a lot more money to maintain that lush look.
This brings us back to our opening question: How do we get more water into California?
Drought conditions have been going on for so long in California that off the top of our heads we cannot remember when our dams have been at full capacity! The call for water use reduction has been an ongoing effort and Southern Californians have heeded the call reducing their water consumption by 24 percent since 1990.
Last year the voters passed a $7.12 billion dollar water bond for various water supply infrastructure projects. At that time, we opposed the water bond primarily because it did very little for the residents and there was not a substantial effort to find ways to generate new water resources such as development of desalination or alternative projects to convert sea water into drinking water. We believe there should be more eco-friendly ways of doing this, such as “forward osmosis”.
To date, the only answer to the drought problem has been conservation and that will only get us so far.
Most San Diegans have gotten around to installing low-flush toilets, swapping out those old shower heads for water conservation ones, and already our lawns are either brown or gone. What we need now are ways to turn that water coming out of the washers into lawn water and ways to capture rain water, when it does rain. There are programs to do this but they are expensive and it takes at least a handyman skill level to install some of those systems for ourselves.
What residents need are low cost supplies and rebates to install the systems that will capture wash water and recycle it into lawn water. At present from our review there are how-to web sites and only an artificial turf rebate program to pull out your front lawn in favor of a water wise landscape. We need more programs and more rebates to aid the homeowner in water conservation.
Till then if you are looking for ways to save on water we can recommend the Water Smart website hosted by the San Diego County Water Authority where you find many helpful ideas on conserving your water and possibly find a suitable way to replace that green lawn with a water wise lawn! Visit http://www. watersmartsd.org/