Posted on 12/05/2007 10:30:19 AM PST by cogitator
So . . . . It’s NOT a rainy night in Georgia?
I'm sure it will (and has recently, but not much). I saw a news report about how many households are hooking up rain barrels to their downspouts.
The Rainbarrel crowd...are just like the German folks....who put up 100 gallon barrels and gather all the water they need for their yards or gardens...thus not pumping from the city water supply. I live in Germany, and I’d bet that 30 percent of all home owners operate with such a set-up. Cost: less than $400 and you can do all of this yourself. I have a guy I work with...who has two 100-gallon type containers...and that gives him more than enough to keep his yard green all year round...at zero cost.
How do you get it out of the barrel into a hose or sprinkler to water though?
The politicians are afraid to act. Water is an increasingly scarce resource, and is therefore underpriced - I’ve heard some incredible stories, anecdotal I know, about excessive water usage. Raise the rates on household water usage, and people will find a way to conserve. Use the extra revenue to develop new water sources.
It will rain again, but the Georgia Administration/Legislature needs to get off its asses and get working on short term and long term plans.
Long term, they need to consider building several desalination plants along the coast, and pipelines to distribute that water statewide. Short term, contracts with companies to deliver water to the area, distribution points, etc.
And as much as I hate Government intrusion, perhaps they need agreements with the local companies to monitor household water usage and mandate reductions based on historical averages, with penalties for overages.
Running out of water would most definitely constitute a State Emergency for which the Government has a role to act.
Not too much, or we’ll start smelling like France. ;-)
Atlanta will be the death of us all.
All of these guys operate some some electrical pump which takes the water out....and usually runs to some irrigation hose around the circle of their house...and then to the garden....with some small pressure sprinkler tossing the water out over the front/back yard (some switch from irrigation to sprinkler). This works for a small yard...and not the huge yards you see with most American homes.
With a small, European type yard, I wouldn't bother. Seems too much work for a postage stamp with a few shrubs on it. Oh well.
Don’t make me start tellin’ ‘Bama jokes.
Nor in NC, SC, or Tennessee either.
How about they stop draining the Res to produce power and save a mussel species....and then let the spring rains fill the reservoir?
Sounds like a plan to me....every drought year you stop the superfluous water drainage from the Res.
Maybe we should start building desalination plants? Then they could deal with all that global warming meltwater that’s gonna raise the seas by 20 feet by drinking it away.
Our Home Depot has garbage cans with spigots at the top and bottom, with a hookup for the downspout on top for $50. It’s a pretty neat setup.
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