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LA Times Editorial: Conservation should be mandatory

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on June 26, 2007 at 6:45 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

This editorial points out that the Mayor should have mandated a 25% reduction in water use, instead of requesting the 10% that he did. The editorial notes how drought has impacted the regions where we draw our water from, and that other cities, such as Las Vegas, are doing much more.

Our waste is so chronic and vast in Southern California that it amounts to a fresh water supply. The MWD and its member agencies, such as the DWP, provide nearly 4.4 million acre-feet of water to the region’s cities. Roughly half that is used outdoors, where more than a million acre-feet a year — enough to meet the needs of 2 million families — is wasted by over-watering with hoses and badly programmed sprinklers and by car washing and driveway hose-downs. In our gardens, the most common cause of plant death is over-watering; an estimated 100 million gallons of runoff flows through L.A. storm drains into the Pacific every day.

Instead of making a serious bid to capture this outdoor waste, after the drought of the late 1980s and early ’90s, the MWD instituted industrial water-recycling projects and ground-water recovery programs and encouraged indoor conservation in the form of low-flush toilets and rebates for front-loading washing machines. Sixteen percent of the water we use now comes from recaptured water. But only 2% of that comes from what’s called “active conservation” — you and I watering less.

…

The questions before Southern Californians now are: Can we afford for water security to be elective? Can we continue to drain the two most important river deltas in the West and leave dustbowls in the mountain ranges while we poison the Pacific with runoff?

The answers have to be no and no. The mayor of the largest city in the Southland shouldn’t be asking Angelenos to conserve but should be moving to mandate it. And he should start at City Hall, where the lawn is so over-watered that mushrooms could grow.

To read the rest of this Los Angeles Times editorial, click here.

June 26, 2007 · Filed Under Conservation

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