Posted on 01/29/2022 4:26:24 PM PST by grundle
Extreme drought in California is forcing drastic measures on the 200,000 residents in Marin County. They have been told to cut their water usage to just 55 gallons a day.
A 10-minute shower uses about 25 gallons. A load of laundry uses 40 gallons of water. A single sprinkler head can spray out 15 gallons per minute.
The new restrictions mean no refilling swimming pools or fountains. Residents can't wash their car in their driveways, and outdoor irrigation is prohibited.
"It's frightening," Fairfax Mayor Stephanie Hellman said of the drought.
John Ware and his wife, Margaret, moved to Marin County because of the lush landscape.
"There's no irrigation until June," Ware said. "We got a third of an acre of mature trees and plants and flowers and I don't want to lose them."
The couple just installed two 1,000-gallon tanks to store rainwater.
Many homeowners are finding almost 80% of their drinking water goes to irrigation, laundry and toilets.
"That's just ridiculous that we're using — think about it — fresh water to flush toilets," said Paul Mann, who installs systems to capture and recycle water for outdoors. It comes with an app that sends an alert when residents use too much.
"Imagine if everyone did this," Mann said. "We would have true sustainability despite the crisis that we're in with climate."
The biggest water users in Marin County face fines of more than $500 on top of their regular bill. If there is no rain the next few months, the local reservoirs could be unusable by summer.
It’s California Who Cares
Bring back widespread use of Chamber Pots. Do your poopy in the pot, for disposal in garbage or compost. No more wasting water by flushing the toilet. One of my daughters went country hopping across Europe and the M.E. - told us about all the different toilet practices elsewhere, where poopy wipes are put in a bucket. You squat over a hole doing your business, and your wipes go in a bucket where you can see everyone else's wipes staring out at you. We have it good in the USA with flushable toilets.
Hope there not golfers
I live in the desert in Texas and harvest rainwater. A 3 minute shower uses about 5 gallons of water. A load of laundry about 10 gals. A dishwasher load about 5 gals. A toilet flush 1.6 gal.
55 gal/day would be the lap of luxury for us.
They would have a state-wide water exchange and storage system available if their govt wasn’t run by idiots.
Liberal Paradise...for Newsom and the Ruling Class.
If they weren’t already doing everything they could artificially to ruin peoples’ lives.
This is from December. California since then has had record snow and rain and their snowpack is at never seen before levels. I think their drought is over.
I’m absolutely sure Pretty Boy Newsom, and his family, take as many showers they want everyday.
Yes - keep letting millions upon millions of illegal immigrants in and then wonder why you don’t have enough water or can’t provide enough power…
Democrats need them for mid term elections!!
Not to mention dumping a five year supply of fresh water into the oceans for what was it? Salmon?
But for some reason the socialist fail to provide the citizens with this basic need.
_________
It is “The environment” stupid!
E.g. California can easily get water from the Pacific ocean. The technology has been pretty refined, it is cheap and safe now.
But, there is a “problem?!” with the salty water which is the byproduct of this process.
Sane people would just say “Why not just to dump it into the ocean?” There is an infinite amount of salt there, little bit more would do not harm. Oh no, the Californians reply. “It may do some harm! Who knows, we better do not do anything.”
Limousine liberals in Marin County get what they voted for.
Did they not remove the pipe? That was the 77 drought. They can always do a rain dance on mt tam I guess!!
The CBS writer was actually talking about a car wash machine, not a home laundry machine but to him, they all look the same. /sarc
Other than garden season —separate system— the 2 of us use about 1,000 gallons per month. 3 weeks, if we need to do extra laundry.
I know, because I haul it to fill our cistern tanks.
having said that, we try not to waste anything....growing green things and having a lawn helps in fire control...plus plants absorb CO2....we try to limit our clothes washing, our dish washing, and even try to take brief showers...no hot tub nor pool....
They better be only collecting rainwater from their roof. Otherwise they are breaking the law. And they better not be using it for irrigation or landscaping. That’s also a big no-no.
Why can’t they use it for irrigation or landscaping? It was headed for the landscape anyway before they collected it. Besides, it’s all part of the water cycle.
Stupid democrat voters getting what they voted for “nice and hard”.
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