You’re right. Californians give only lip service to “water conservation.” Any Californian pol that tells you they’re going to institute a water conservation program is full of crap, because they never go after the 800 gorilla in the room of water policy: lawns.
Californians: here’s an example of a serious water conservation program: In Las Vegas, they will pay you $1.00 per square foot of watered lawn to rip it out and replace it with... whatever else that doesn’t require water. $1.00 per square foot comes to $43,560.00 per acre.
In Southern California (and other low desert environments), you probably need at least five feet of water to keep a lawn green every year. Take the square area of your lawn, stack up water five feet deep, and that’s a good estimate of how much water you’re putting on your lawn every year. In areas like Palm Springs or San Diego, where your lawn doesn’t go dormant at any time during the year, it is probably closer to eight feet deep.
As long as there is a single lawn on any piece of property (much less the large expanses of grass by the highways and outside public buildings that they water), California is not serious about conserving water. All the stupid little stunts about low-flow toilets, not serving water unless you ask, blah, blah, blah — they’re stupid little PR stunts, not real conservation measures.
The only thing that will really make a difference is to stop watering lawn grass. Period, end of discussion, thanks for playing with policy.
This has been brought to you by a farmer in the high desert who pays thousands of dollars a month in water pumping bills to water a crop, so I know a thing or two about water conservation on my own dime.
thanks.
i too grew up on a farm, so i notice this.
i live in the coachella valley now.
speaking of LAWNS! in the low desert. a majority of the valley is given to golf courses. look at a map of our valley.
the result is a higher humidity, and now
mosquitoes.
yes, mosquitos in the desert! it’s unbelievable.
the coachella valley mosquito and vector control
cannot control the mosquitoes.
and, los angeles and san diego and the state of california forcibly took that water from the imperial valley farmers.