I live in so cal in an area that is on the moderate/severe area. I delivered payroll yesterday to a client doing business in a gated community. There is a large water feature, man made pond and falls, at the enterance, and no water was running, and the water level was low. It never looked like this before. With our recent spring storms, well, any precipitation is welcome.
look at Katrina....people building on marsh land and land susceptible to flooding basically and on land even the Indians knew better then to build on...
the West, a good part of it, is just plain old dry, especially many parts of California...
so what do we do?..build huge retirement communities, encourage pools at every house, and huge golf courses kept green year round....and by God we'll keep all those lawns green no matter what...
I can see water for crops....that is critical and essential to human life....
but for the rest of it....we just need to start living simpler and more in tune with the resources available..
I grew up in upstate NY, the southern tier, and at our house, because for many years we had a well, we did not waste water. if you wanted to water your vegetables, we carried water and carefully dumped it preciously right at the roots...showers were quick.....and my mother had one of those wringer washers that she filled with hot water, ran the whites thru, and preceeded using the same water until the darks were complete...
wasting water was not what our parents and grandparents did....