Los Angeles Proposes Plan to Conserve Water
Los Angeles officials discussed Thursday a plan to conserve water which includes limiting water use, punishing water wasters and recycling waste water, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.
Officials say the City of Los Angeles will have a 15 percent increase in water demand by 2030. To accommodate the robust need, 32 billion gallons of water will have to be saved or recaptured each year.
According to the article, certain limitations on when and how often citizens could water their lawns or wash their cars would be put in place. New building codes and financial incentives would encourage builders to install waterless urinals, weather-sensitive sprinkler systems and porous parking lot paving that allows rain to percolate into groundwater supplies.
The idea of reusing waste water has been controversial. However, Orange County and other Southern California agencies are already recycling treated sewage water back into the drinking supply.
The proposal has not yet been approved.
Learn more about how you can conserve water in your home and neighborhood.
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doagreenthing
posted on May 20th, 2008 at 6:38 am
I recently realized just how much one can waste water without really realizing it. We had a lawn sprinkler system installed some years back. The installer set it, and we never bothered to think about it for a year or two. Then after deciphering our water bill, I realized how much water we were using.
Since then, I have investigated more natural methods for keeping my lawn green (mow long, leave the clippings in, use little or no fertilizer and so on, mulch our garden beds) and found that we hardly needed any water at all (we watered twice last summer). We cut our overall water use by more than 1/2.
Since then we have added low-flow shower heads, fewer flushes, a new clothes washer and general consciousness about water use have cut our use almost in half again.
Sadly, our pre-enlightenment water use is probably typical. The good news is that without any “sacrifice” we are using a great deal less water and have a much lower water bill … and because some of the water we save was heated, lower energy bills, as well.
This and other things we have done are cataloged on my blog at http://fivepercent.us for anyone interested.
Tom