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Letter from the Editor: Life by the gallon

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Staff

Water and gasoline don’t mix, but the conservation of each merged over the winter as both liquids got scarce. Like a lot of people, I found myself more and more measuring myself by the gallon. A shorter shower saved this. A trip by bike or on foot saved that.

Thanks to recent rains, the worries about water have eased a bit. It’s part supply and part demand. Water-conservation rules may no longer be as strict, but conservation is still all the rage as evidenced by OWASA’s rate increase due to an expected long-range drop in water use. The same thing happened after the drought of 2002.

As for supply, one question I get a lot is why it’s taking so long for Cane Creek Reservoir to refill, when University Lake and pretty much all of the local reservoirs are spilling their banks. The answer is in the design of the lake itself. To keep the watershed completely in Orange County, Cane Creek has a watershed of roughly 60 square miles, the same size as University Lake’s, which is seven times smaller.

I get an email every morning from Dusty Martin (whose name seemed more appropriate during the drought), OWASA’s chief plant operator, charting water use and supply. This month we passed three billion gallons in the reservoirs — a 15-month supply.

The gas crisis won’t end so easily.

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