“drought emergency”">“drought emergency”

Our Gov­er­nor has declared a drought emer­gency for Cal­i­for­nia. The state rain­fall and snow­pack has been lower than aver­age for most of the recent years, and reser­voir reserves are dwin­dling. My county has been slightly over aver­age in its rain­fall this sea­son but most of our water comes from the Sierra snows and the Col­orado River. So this cri­sis is very real for us down here as well.

hang-tag_1At this point we’re on call for a vol­un­tary water reduc­tion, but if the rains fail us peo­ple will be required to reduce their water use 20%, and then–if things get worse–by 40% or more. Since land­scapes con­sumes the major­ity of the water, our county water author­ity has started an adver­tis­ing cam­paign to deliver these water-overuse door­knob hang­ers with the Sun­day paper. It’s also avail­able online: here.

There are check­boxes for “Your sprin­klers are water­ing the pave­ment,” “Your sprin­klers were on dur­ing the rain,” “You have a bro­ken sprin­kler, and/or your irri­ga­tion sys­tem is leak­ing,” “Your sprin­klers are on every day” and “Your sprin­klers are on dur­ing the day.” My local shop­ping cen­ter is a huge offender in the first cat­e­gory and will be get­ting a hang tag from me.

But this pro­gram is mostly about sprin­klers and water­ing habits and doesn’t really address the under­ly­ing causes. There really need to be big boxes say­ing, “Your huge expanse of grass and water-thirsty plants are attrac­tive, but I’d like to show you how you can have a terrific-looking yard that requires almost no addi­tional water,” or “This extremely well-watered golf course has no place in the desert that is San Diego County.”

The very green golf course in the local canyon bot­tom would get a vio­la­tion tag if that were the case. At least, to their credit, they let the dri­ving range go brown with the end of the rains. Maybe in Cal­i­for­nia golf could morph into a sea­sonal win­ter sport, like ski­ing? Maybe I’m delusional?

March 01 2009 10:15 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • •

5 Responses to ““drought emergency””

  1. susan (garden-chick) on 01 Mar 2009 at 4:58 pm #

    So many of my calls in the past 8 months have been for lawn reduc­tion or elim­i­na­tion that I thought peo­ple were finally get­ting it. But I was chat­ting with my hair styl­ist last week and told her our water dis­trict was going to water rationing in May (which she didn’t know). She was uncon­cerned because she doesn’t use much water other than doing the dishes. I told her that 80% of sum­mer water goes to irri­ga­tion and she still wasn’t con­cerned because she doesn’t have a lot of plants. So then I said, the problem’s not the plants, it’s the lawn, but I’m still not sure she grasped what I was say­ing (and I didn’t want to upset her while she was hold­ing the scissors.)

    How can peo­ple con­serve when they don’t even under­stand where their water is going?

  2. Blue Fox on 01 Mar 2009 at 5:32 pm #

    It’s a sad fact, but lots of peo­ple won’t get it until they turn the tap on, and no water comes out. By that time, it’s prob­a­bly going to be all over but the cryin’!

  3. lostlandscape on 03 Mar 2009 at 8:44 pm #

    Susan, it’s good you got the dis­cus­sion going with your styl­ist. Even if she didn’t get it the first time around, hope­fully that might help with things the next time she hears some­thing sim­i­lar. I think I’d have shown the same kind of restraint in the posi­tion you were in, but I sup­pose a “What hap­pened to your hair?” ques­tion could slide into piles of teach­able moments. It sounds like your get­ting calls from oth­ers who clearly get the point.

    Blue Fox, some­times it takes a shock for peo­ple to really get it. Let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point!

  4. Jean on 09 Mar 2009 at 12:44 pm #

    I wish you luck with your water sit­u­a­tion. It’s get­ting pretty dire in large parts of the U.S. When I lived in Austin we rou­tinely had water restric­tions in the sum­mer (could only water on cer­tain days; Texas is now hav­ing seri­ous drought issues). I really like the fact that you all have those door hang­ers. That should help edu­cate the offend­ers (I hope).

  5. lostlandscape on 10 Mar 2009 at 7:02 am #

    Thanks, Jean. The last time I looked at a national drought map I noticed that the area that looked worst-hit wasn’t Cal­i­for­nia but cen­tral Texas. We’re prob­a­bly navel-gazing a bit here on the left coast–There def­i­nitely are drought issues going around all over!

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