Tonight I speak at a city water board meeting, I think I get 3 minutes. At current rates of use during the mulit year drought, the huge lake that supplies 70% of our water will fail us in 18 months. We won't be completely out, the balance comes from wells sunk into an underground lake.
6 months ago the water department planned to raise rates and restrict lawn watering. You would have thought Obama was suggesting it. The shit hit the fan, led by pool owners, there's thousands of pools and no matter if we run out, they will fill the pool one last time, and they don't intend to pay a higher rate to do it. We are a forward thinking city, we got thousands of pools, maybe a dozen solar roofs, and the plan settled on to fix the water crises coming at us, so they dropped the plan and said pray. I shit you not, they ask for prayer for rain. It's worked for west Texas right?
There are a number of things that can be done, my suggestions will be: *building codes for the 1 gal flush toilets, (I have those for 15 years, you can't tell the diff), *enlist garden clubs and county agricultural agents and news media to promote and instruct for low water use grasses, trees and shrubs (time to stop growing blue grass and fescue lawns in central Kansas), *the water department should include on water bill the neighbors water volume use numbers (where electric companies do this use goes down as most people are competitive and want to be near the lower use than the higher, people don't want to pay more than the next guy.
All these will help a little, but none can have an immediate impact. Only price and hard restrictions will create an immediate change in habits. So here are the ones that will have impact.
*Ban watering lawns to either 2 or 3 days a week the rest of this year, if the water level continues to fall, next year it should go to 1 day or perhaps total. (Buffalo grass does not need watering, and it grows fine here, it also rarely needs mowing, it's not popular because it is not bright green, but a pale green thin blade.) *Raise rates progressively by volume, and steeply. *Ban filling of private swimming pools if the water level continues to fall by late summer.
I expect to be booed. Thank you and fuck you very much.
You tell 'em, Darrell! (At least they can't then say they weren't warned ... )
ReplyDeleteI will. Gonna open with; Currently, the closer you are to the hydrant, the lower your insurance premiums, I have a concern about our dwindling water reserves, if the fire department can't access sufficient volumes of water, will our rates increase?
DeleteMoney is all these fucks understand. Play the money card first, then the other shit, keep it short so they don't drift or catch on.
People water their lawns more than three times a week? I guess I'm out of touch with life in the Great Plains.
ReplyDeleteIndeed they do, as a matter of fact, lots of people here set the auto-sprinkle system to squirt it every single day. What a way to use it up.
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