A modest proposal to save water

California is short of water. Since water doesn’t grow on trees we need to stop wasting water and stop now.

Early the other morning I was driving a friend to breakfast. We stopped two blocks from my house to turn onto a major street through town. The sprinklers system was on watering the vegetation in the center median of the major street. It was also watering the street from one side to the other. Cars were zipping through the wet street sending water every where. This was during daylight not some midnight accident.

Several blocks later we drove past the Department of Motor Vehicles offices. Their sprinklers were on full blast. Those sprinklers did not have near as much over spray but one sprinkler head had broken off and a fountain of water was shooting straight up four or more feet.

My recommendation to remediate this type of problem is to put someone in charge. Both these instances were before normal working hours and it would be expensive and inefficient to have someone watch the sprinklers. But during working hours a person at the city or state office could be charged with making sure water is not wasted. Offices for the state and many city offices are not owned by the state or city, still the office water Czar could work with the owner of the building and the ground keeping contractor to insure there is no over spray, no broken sprinklers, that the timers for the sprinklers are set to come on only twice a week and only come on after dark. All these measures would show the tax payer that the state is trying to save water (even when it is the building owner who is wasting water).

Additional action could be for state owned building to put in artificial turf or rock gardens. A visit to Tuscon Arizona could show how well that can be done.

The state could help fund cities so that they can put in drip irrigation systems to replace spray type sprinklers.

These simple measures would make the state and cities look like they are not wasting water.

Write on, draw on.    Professor Hyram Voltage