After a few years of drought, Dallas is getting lots of rain this spring. But just west of Fort Worth, they are still experiencing exceptional drought - just like California. California and the Southwest are going to have to make some hard choices....this part of the world can not sustain this many people without doing things that will offend environmentalists. Water conversation goes without saying. Some of my ideas would include tap some of the estuary river water and pump it upstream just before it enters the ocean. Deepen the lakes so they can hold more water (this can work in Texas at least.) And use the heat from power plants to desalinate sea water.
This NYTimes link popped up on the comment string of a local news article, contrasting the differing approaches of Santa Fe NM to Fresno CA: Water Pricing in Two Thirsty Cities: In One, Guzzlers Pay More, and Use Less Despite a recent rate 'shock', Fresno's water is still cheap, cheap, cheap.
We've been in a drought for a decade in the Rocky Mountains but we actually had legislators that passed tough conservation laws and things have been OK. There is a 3 tier residential water usage program and if you get into the higher tiers your bill doubles and then triples. You can only water ornamental things like grass/flowers 2-3 times a week and an even/odd system based off of the address for which days you get and then only between dusk-dawn, no bright sunny watering. No washing cars with garden hoses or anything like that. Since all water usage is monitored, you get a phone call if you have a spike in your normal usage. I got one last year because there was a toilet in a guest bathroom that was rarely ever used that developed a slow tank leak so it was topping off every few minutes. I wouldn't have noticed myself. If you are caught abusing the water like watering more than you are allowed to you get a huge fine and a court date. Sounds extreme, but it is. I would rather live with enough water than with no water. And something people don't consider is that when you go without rain it actually makes it worse when it does rain. The ground is not a sponge, it doesn't just soak up water when it gets hit. If the soil is very dry and compacted rain will barely dampen the surface and then run away causing floods. The ground has to be moist already for rain to soak into it. Double edged sword. We have had torrential rain yesterday and today and the ground is dry if you kick/scrape away the topmost layer. It ends up in the waste water system or rivers and flows away.
In February we were skiing in "late season" conditions already. Slushy at the base, visible rocks and things. It was pretty bad, but still managed about 300K vertical feet skied according to the Epic Pass tracker.
It's getting so bad that Sacramento is installing water meters! Gasp! Sacramento to speed up water meter installations | The Sacramento Bee
What a scandal. Sacramento is one of the cities where unmetered residential water was taken as a birthright, and metering was forbidden in the city charter. Those were finally preempted by state law in about 2005. Federal laws concerning use of water from federal water projects also factored in. Folsom and Fresno had the same situations, but bucked up and implemented reasonable plans to comply. Both completed their metering projects a couple years ago. But Sacramento resisted, got the 2015 deadline pushed back to 2025, and wrote up a $400,000,000+ compliance plan that would not be completed until the extended deadline. Half way through the allowed time frame, Sacramento is barely half metered, even though state law has required all construction built since 1992 to have meters, even when local law forbade reading of those meters. This new plan to speed up the project by 4 years, and shave several tens of millions of dollars off the plan, will help. But the scandal and hints of corruption remain.
we've had them since i was a kid. (50's) i don't know how long, but even though we have a lot of water, the piping and reservoir and treatment systems are old and expensive. also, our sewerage is tied to water use.
That is because you don't live in the very last state of the Union to get water management plans. With a comparatively plentiful water supply, and a tenth the population of the U.S. (and less than California alone), you can still get away with things that we outgrew long long ago. While I'm a bit surprised that metro Vancouver can still get away without metering, I suspect that many lower population portions of Canada will be able to go several more generations before having to worry about it.
We get sprinkling restrictions most summers, so hey, guess we're joining the big boys. I do not know even where our sprinklers ARE, just let it go dry. But for every slacker like me there's someone watering like crazy.
I can very easily see my sprinklers, sticking down from the ceiling. But I want to keep things dry, so have never tripped them on. Oh, you mean lawn sprinklers. Mine are fire sprinklers. My house is among the lucky few required to have them. A real pain when the various authorities having jurisdiction haven't been able to get their acts together.
the fire sprinkler manufacturers tried to get the legislature here to make them mandatory in residential housing. spent a lot of money lobbying, but not as much as the realtors and builders. fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.
That is the boondoggle. Sacramento didn't need all new water mains. Those new mains vastly increased the cost and greatly increased the time needed to install meters. The long time superintendent who hoodwinked the council into installing new mains, and installing meters into sidewalks instead of easier locations, has pleaded guilty to bribery in federal court. Here are a couple news items: Public Corruption over water meters rocks Sacramento Is Sacramento’s costly water-meter install wasting millions?
