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June 19, 2013
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California Feels the HeatPosted on Jun 4, 2008
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has made it official: California is in a drought. It’s the first official drought declaration for the Golden State in 17 years. Schwarzenegger has threatened water rationing to protect the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry.
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By montymarket, June 5, 2008 at 9:06 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
On Hong Kong island, the central section of the former British colony in south China, for years the hotels (e.g., the Furama, Mandarin, etc.) have two water lines: sea water piped in from the Hong Kong Harbor for flushing toilets, fresh water for sink and shower. That saves fresh water. And no need to put a colored scent in the toilet tank because the toilet water naturally is green already.
Report thisBy Leefeller, June 5, 2008 at 6:21 am Link to this comment
JPS
Planing for the future? Like Iraq oil, the water will not be yours for long, their is money to be made. Almost like one of those Scifi. movies Mad Max comes to mind.
Report thisBy jackpine savage, June 5, 2008 at 5:07 am Link to this comment
And yet building codes do not specify rain water catchment or gray water recycling for toilets.
There are 300M+ people in the country, and while i don’t know the average number of daily trips to the toilet per person i would figure it to be a minimum of four. The average toilet is a 2.5 gallon flush (some are better, few are worse).
Is my math correct? We contaminate 3 billion gallons of drinking water per day with urine and feces.
Last summer, stories about serious water rationing in the south were in the news. Towns were limited to a few hours of running water each day (a common thing in many parts of the world, but terror for Americans). Did that significantly change behavior? No, it only meant that every washing machine, dishwasher, and shower in town turned on at the same time every day.
The rest of you will soon (in some cases/ways you already are) be beating down my door to get at the 20% of the world’s fresh surface water that i’m sitting next to/on. Think again.
I’ll be damned if i’m going to let the rest of you pipe this water away just so you can shit in it and throw it away.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
Report thisBy cyrena, June 5, 2008 at 4:39 am Link to this comment
I don’t know why there isn’t more of a desalination effort in California. We’re sitting here on a pretty big Ocean. And for the purposes of addressing areas that are dangerously dry and subject to wild fires, the stuff doesn’t even have to be desalinated first. They just need to move some of this Ocean water to those areas and soak ‘em down before they can go up in flames.
Am I being too simplistic here? Hell, if they can put men and women on the moon, or robots on Mars, why can’t they figure out how to move a bunch of gallons of Ocean water to wherever the dry spots are?
We use recycled water here in my own community for watering any of the grounds. Seems like they could hook-up the agricultural irrigation system the same way.
Nope…I’m not a water or agricultural engineer, but it still seems like an idea worth considering. Besides, it’ll give a bunch of folks something to do..considering the lack of other jobs.
If water has to cost so much more, it ought to be because we’re paying folks to purify it and move it from one place to the other.
Report thisBy Johnny, June 5, 2008 at 2:05 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Hi,
I just wanted to say that the site http://www.treehoo.com uses most of its profit to plant trees and fight global warming and climate change. The service is free and on the site you can do Google searches plus more. Everyone should use it as their default homepage, I do!
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