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.
“Imagine if everyone did this,” Mann said. “We would have true sustainability despite the crisis that we’re in with climate.”
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Also if you had kept all you reservoirs full, instead of emptying them for some critter you deemed ‘endangered’ because there are only a few in you area (but man many more elsewhere), punk.
Those numbers are ridiculous. It does not take 40 gallons of water to wash a load of clothes. Or 25 gallons to take a shower. I’ve never seen a sprinkler head that could push out 15 gallons a minute.
Sprinklers can be 25 gpm mine are around the house when all ten are running it uses the full output of a 250 gpm well pump.
My HE washer uses 15 gallons when not on deep fill cycle and no extra rinse. With both those on it’s nearly double at 28 gallons per load but I have city water for that and drinking with a irrigation well on property for everything outside including the pool hotub and sauna.Texas is a right of capture state I can pump my well till my heart’s content I don’t live in a groundwater control zone.
There is solid evidence via tree rings that California and the southwest have droughts that last for centuries it’s part of the climate cycle in that region. The water compacts were all drawn up during a period of unusual wetness not seen again over the last 2000 years. They need desal they should ask the Israelis they can desal seawater cheaper than the retail rates in any Texas City at under 60 cents a cubic meter.
Urban water use is 10% of total water use in California that includes commercial and industrial users which are half of that 10% so residential use is only 5% that’s a rounding errors compared to the agricultural use. Even if half the population is illegals that is still only 2.5% a literal drop in the bucket.
Those geniuses dump 5 million acres feet of water on growing grass in the desert to feed cows with it. Alfalfa is the largest user of water in the state. Most of that grass is exported to places like Saudi Arabia. Look deeper than some little political skree agriculture is the abuser of water in California but hey don’t let facts get in the way of a good straw man argument.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
USC Davis has a good study on water use by the alfalfa sector. Google scholar it they have ET pans, digital soil moisture sensors, flow.gauges, aerial multispectrial imagery the works. Short of it to grow grass in the desert you need 60” plus of water irrigated just to counter the evaporation and transporation of that climate. That’s FIVR FEET of water per acre. It’s not the illegals it’s big agriculture notice try though.
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