"Water, water, every where, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink."
This famous line from Coleridge's' Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner speaks to the irony of the sailors need for drinking water while sailing on the vast ocean. Although desalination and distillation techniques have been around forever, major desalination plants are not yet mainstream. As technology improves costs will lower and it is probably a forgone conclusion that business will eventually figure this important equation out. "I water" anyone? With stage three water restrictions in place here on the "wet coast" there is also some irony. Technically we live in a rain forest. Really though, the past few months we have been living in just a forest. A tinder dry forest.
We go through a lot of water.
Each person in British Columbia uses about 350 litres of water a day. Thirty per cent of this total is from flushing the toilet and another 30 per cent comes from bathing and washing. Most new toilets use only six liters per flush, which shaves off an astounding 14 litres per flush from older models, which, if tallied over the course of a year, would save a staggering 250,000 litres per toilet.
Canada's personal water use is second only to the United States in the developed world and only shows that we are incredibly wasteful. Nothing to be very proud of here.
Closer to home, Delta was featured on the Global 6 o'clock news this week. Our bylaw enforcement officers have one of the highest ticket-to-warning ratios in Metro Vancouver for enforcing sprinkling violations.
Our officers have issued 250 warnings but have also written 40 $400 tickets to illegal sprinklers in our midst who are now affectionately known as "grassholes." In contrast, Vancouver has 14 enforcement officers on the case and has issued a whopping 1,400 warnings but only 35 tickets at $250 a pop.
You would figure that Mayor Moonbeam would be all over this one in his sustainable city cause.
I am glad that we are working hard to comply here in Delta. Reservoirs are down to 69 per cent, which doesn't seem overly scary, but I suppose that if this spell of dry weather continues other complications could arise.
If you are growing your own veggies it is a challenge to be mindful of plant needs while ensuring you are not over watering. On the large-scale operations in our midst, farmers are making best efforts to keep our local crops fed. Nothing is perfect in farming and farmers water when they can even though the daytime water canons lose almost half the water to evaporation on these incredibly hot days. When you are driving around or walking your dog you may have noticed those homes whose lawns have been magically immune to the drought. It may be that they have installed special surface layer aquifers or something. Probably not. The cultural obsession with a green lawn can be put to rest. In fact, lawns can be put to rest. Not the greatest use of land when we consider that it takes more than a city block to grow enough food to feed one person for the year.
Innovate and don't lawn obsess because in reality, brown is the new green.
