What Big Water Elephant(s) in the room?

We are being asked to conserve a drop more  water while Cities, Businesses, Gov Centers, Military Bases, Golf Courses, Farmers, Colleges, and Fracking (I am sure I missed one or two) are wasting a gallon. So for every drop we save, they are wasting a gallon. This is not a good equation if we are every to get a handle on our water use.

Driving thru town, I saw one city worker, adjusting sprinkler heads i on the mid island of the road. Tree line with ivy (very nice) but I counted 50 heads (do not do this while driving!) on that one block alone! I counted the 5 blocks of plantings and came up with 250 heads. Here is a perfect example of water wasted by cities. I figure each head uses around 1 gallon water for 5 min of watering or about 1/4 gal per min. If they run for 5 min then its 1 1/4 gallons per head or about 50 gallons water per 5 minutes. That is for one block only,: make it for 5 blocks and you have over 250 gallons water use in 5 min. That same area can be watered using a drip system, assuming same number of drip heads per block or 50 drip heads and each head is 2 gallons per hour and assuming 15 minutes drip run, we have 1/2 gal per each head or 25 gallons per block or 125 gallons for the 5 blocks. Apply rock dust,  compost,  and mulch ; and you will only have to water once a week as opposed to several times per week with over head. Also figure that 75% of overhead water is lost to evaporation and you can figure that 100% of drip water is used, that you will reduce the 15 min even more!

Figure how much water a small city uses and wastes and you will clearly see a Big Water Elephant.

Figure the same type of waste with Golf Courses, Gov Centers, Military Bases, Farmers and Frackers and you will clearly see the biggest water users around. 

Just recently, homeowners with pools are being asked to keep a cover on the to reduce evaporation. Really?  Again save a drop waste a gallon.

We must pay attention to the big Water Elephants in the room and make them behave. We should stop Fracking (besides the massive amounts of water use, they clearly cause earthquakes and pollute the environment ). We should make the state pass laws and bills that force the farmers to act like good gardeners; and learn better and more efficient ways of "farming ".  We should walk our talk and become more efficient in how cities use their water. We should demand that the military get on the same page and be more efficient in how they use their water. We should demand that golf courses stop wasting water. I saw just yesterday a giant fountain, in the middle of a lake at a nearby golf course . Talk about evaporation! I think it would be a better way to reduce evaporation if we shut down all fountains, for the time being; especially those in golf courses, city centers, shopping centers, etc. The evaporation saved there would be 1,000 times greater then what we would be saving with covering the pool. Evaporation is just a drop saved. Cover the pool anyways because we can; we should not make the little guys pay for the big guys wasteful habits.

Andy Lopez

Invisible Gardener

Any questions? Email me andy@invisiblegardener.com