"Money the planet is spending on war machines would be better spent on energy and food and water collection technologies. I'm wondering why we aren't trying to collect rain water in the ultra rainy areas of the midwest and send it to the arrid areas of the country. Cisterns should be the biggest money investments around. If for nothing else than to filter rainwater for drinking water. Instead, we watch it drain off into the gulf. I really think we should follow the rain for the water supplies that are dwindling. It will be an issue. Sooner or later we'll have water collection infrastructure in place everywhere like we should also have solar and wind collection everywhere. Spend the money on it now, and it will pay us back big time in ten years. Build it out of the right materials and it will work for decades."
agree completely.. did you see this ..?? ..
Message to cities: Conserving water is a necessity now South Bay's supplier will visit the councils to urge them to adopt new policies.
By Kristin S. Agostoni Staff Writer
For weeks now, television and radio spots have pleaded with Southern Californians to get stingy with water: Take shorter showers, turn off the tap when brushing your teeth, put a timer on lawn sprinklers.
And as the region's water supply remains vulnerable, that drumbeat is only expected to grow louder this fall.
Within the next few months, the agency that supplies water to cities across the South Bay plans to take the message to city hall, where officials would be briefed on conservation strategies and urged to adopt policies for using recycled water where possible.
West Basin Municipal Water District next week will ask its board members to adopt the outreach program - "It's Time to Get Serious" - and visit each of the cities it serves.
The goal is to get city councils to create new programs and update their ordinances - laws that might not have been given much attention since the region's last drought.
Doing so could push more businesses and public agencies to use recycled water for irrigation, or bring more developers to plant drought-resistant landscaping, said Fernando Paludi, the district's manager of planning and water resources.
"We view our main audience as local cities," he said. "They probably haven't looked at their ordinances since '89 to '92, the last drought."
The program "gets us in there," he said. "It raises awareness."
Earlier this week, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors heeded the call for conservation and agreed to craft an ordinance requiring drought-tolerant and native landscaping in all new developments in unincorporated areas.
Cities and water agencies across Southern California are wringing their hands over record-low rainfall levels and a federal court decision that limits the amount of water Southern California can receive from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in an attempt to prevent the extinction of the delta smelt.
Already, officials with Metropolitan Water District, which imports water from the delta and the Colorado River, have said they'll cut water to Southern California farmers by 30 percent next year and are drafting plans that could force rationing for the first time in more than a decade.
West Basin is one of the Metropolitan Water District's 26 member agencies and supplies water to 17 local cities and unincorporated county areas. Other South Bay cities, such as Torrance, buy water directly from the MWD. West Basin so far has called for voluntary rationing as officials wait to see whether the MWD adopts a plan next year that would limit its share of water, Paludi said.
"If we have another (dry) winter like we had last year, it's quite possible Met will continue to depend on reserves … and they'll probably have to buy water from farther south of the delta," Paludi said.
And the costs could trickle down to customers. MWD officials earlier this month indicated wholesale rates could rise as much as 10 percent within the next two years, although Paludi said it's too soon to say whether West Basin's rates would rise that much.
At least for the short term, officials are focused on getting out the word and encouraging voluntary rationing.
Although the board has yet to formally adopt the plan, West Basin Assistant General Manager Paul Shoenberger made a stop Tuesday night at the Redondo Beach City Council chambers, where he answered questions and talked about conservation strategies.
The Redondo Beach SEA Lab will serve as home to the district's desalination demonstration project, which some day could lead to a new source of potable water.
Board members will likely split up within the next couple months and make similar visits within their elected districts.
"We're hoping for continued vigilance on the part of the public," said board President Don Dear. "It takes a lot to get the public's attention, but I think this is a good time to reinforce the message to our cities to save water."
In some cases, cities might learn from neighbors.
Redondo Beach Councilman Chris Cagle, who serves on a water policy task force for the Southern California Association of Governments, said he believes the beach city has already made strides by using recycled water for irrigating landscaping and installing low-flow toilets in restrooms, among other initiatives.
But Cagle said he was surprised to learn that nearby Inglewood had its street sweepers outfitted to take in water that comes from the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant and is recycled at West Basin's El Segundo treatment facility.
"That's one idea," Cagle said. "There's probably a lot of things like that the city could do."
The South: In Hot Water About Water A drought has underscored how unbridled growth is taxing the region's dwindling supplies
by Nanette Byrnes
The Southeast is thirsty. Because of a record drought, Atlanta now has 87 days of drinking water left if rain doesn't fall soon. Raleigh, N.C., has 97 days. Some restaurants in Atlanta aren't offering drinking water unless asked. Farmers in North Carolina are so low on hay that they've begun selling cattle. And dams along the Savannah River have gotten to such low levels this summer they've fallen short of generating the hydropower promised to help keep the region's air conditioners blasting.
Most of the blame at the moment is falling squarely on historically low rainfall. But an equally important culprit has been the unbridled growth of the Southeast in the past 50 years. The region's abundance of cheap water has long fueled development. Now economists fear that the parched earth could become the most important constraint on the region's growth. "Even if the current drought ended tomorrow, we'd still be facing a crisis 12 to 15 years from now," says Sam A. Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Williams is in the midst of a battle for more water from the Army Corps of Engineers and is pushing for a statewide water management plan.
Booming Demand
The Southeast's problems could well be a warning for other parts of the nation. "Across the country this is going to become more of an issue," says Mark M. Zandi, chief economist at Moody's (MCO) Economy.com. "Water increasingly will be a binding constraint on growth. More energy and resources will be devoted to thinking about moving water from where we have a lot of it to where we don't have enough of it."
The diminishing water supply in the Southeast has come at a time of soaring demand. Population growth and water use in the region have both outstripped the national average in recent years. According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, water consumption in the Southeast grew 15% from 1990 to 2000, compared with 2% nationwide. The population rose by 20%, vs. 13% for the country as a whole, and the South has added 4.4 million people since 2000. Demand from traditionally large water customers, including ranches, mines, and factories, actually declined during that period. But that drop was overshadowed by increasing demand for tap and lawn water.
One area facing acute shortages in spots is the I-85 corridor in South Carolina. The road, along with a low cost of doing business in the state, has helped lure employers such as BMW, Hitachi (HIT), and BASF, but it crosses the driest area of the state. Now these companies' plants—and the suburban communities with irrigated lawns that sprouted nearby—are facing a tightening water supply. Walhalla, S.C,, for example, relies on rapidly dwindling stream water and has imposed usage restrictions. "The drought is a serious short-term issue, but it has opened our eyes to the water problems we have and to the fact they won't be going away," says Jeffrey S. Allen, director of the South Carolina Water Resources Center at Clemson University.
Difficult Solutions
If the causes of the water shortage are clear, the solutions are far less obvious. Unlike the Southwest, which has been planning water use for the past 200 years, the Southeast is less equipped to deal with drought. Its outdated laws make dealing with shortages challenging. Some communities have tried to adopt techniques used in drier climates. Sixteen counties in Georgia, for example, have put in place two-tiered pricing, with those who use less paying a lower rate.
Still. water remains a consumer's cheapest utility, with bills averaging $25 per month across the country, and sewage $20, compared with $60 to $100 per month for cell-phone service, notes Francesca McCann, water industry analyst for Houston-based Stanford Group Co. That has created a false sense of the resource as being low in value, she says, and will make it hard to come up with the half-trillion dollars the Environmental Protection Agency estimates will be needed in drinking water and sewage upgrades nationwide over the next 20 years.
Water tensions are high enough that Southeastern states are suing one another. Alabama, Florida, and Georgia continue a series of lawsuits over water that have been in the courts for years. Another suit, currently being considered for review by the U.S. Supreme Court, pits South Carolina against North Carolina. At issue: the northern state's plans to divert 10 million gallons from a shared river to bolster water supply to fast-growing towns outside booming Charlotte. South Carolina objects to the plan being created without its participation. It also claims the move violates the U.S. Constitution's doctrine of Equitable Apportionment by ignoring Sourth Carolina's needs, which should have equal status in matters of interstate rivers. "The place is a dead desert without water except for the lizards and the cactuses," says South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, who filed the suit. "This will be a good time to lay out the water rules. A lot of problems can be averted down the line by dealing with this correctly now."
Byrnes is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York .
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