
{"id":1696,"date":"2008-01-18T14:14:10","date_gmt":"2008-01-18T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/01\/18\/conserving-water-is-good-to-the-last-drop\/"},"modified":"2008-01-18T14:14:10","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T22:14:10","slug":"conserving-water-is-good-to-the-last-drop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/01\/18\/conserving-water-is-good-to-the-last-drop\/","title":{"rendered":"Conserving water is good to the last drop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Valarie Schwartz<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Good news arrived in the mail last week with the OWASA bill: The goal of using only 1,000 gallons of water in my two-person household was reached. With the extra cooking and out-of-state guests in December, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d prepared myself for it to remain at 2,000 gallons. This assuages my guilt over forcing a guest away from the sink when she stood there letting the water run down the drain while washing dishes. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Step away from the sink,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I calmly said, while reaching over her shoulder and abruptly shutting off the water. She had already been warned about the drought and my obsession with not wasting water. That was the last time she tried that.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, before Wednesday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anticipated rain that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come, I emptied one of my two rain barrels so there would be room for more collecting and so plants could get a head start. While repeatedly dipping my watering can into the barrel and casting it across the beds, I thought of the rain barrel-making session that OWASA provided in December, a workshop so popular that Paula Thomas said two more had been scheduled; both, planned for Jan. 30, are booked \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with a waiting list of 52.<\/p>\n<p>Not only do the recycled pickle barrels, provided by the county\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Mark Ray, have screened lids but also spigots at the bottom for attaching a hose to and watering from, and an additional hole (with cap) near the top for directing flow into another collection source once the barrel is filled (which happens quickly when situated in the right spot under a roof on a rainy day). Every gardener needs at least one.<\/p>\n<p>These ponderings bring to mind the things we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned during this latest drought.<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wear clothes repeatedly (unless smelly or obviously dirty);<\/li>\n<li>Skip one rinse cycle on top-loading washing machines (set a timer to catch it);<\/li>\n<li>Toss yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leftover dog water onto a flowerbed (on warm days only);<\/li>\n<li>Wash hair once a week (think of the products we save);<\/li>\n<li>Keep a container next to the kitchen sink and pour the final rinse water from washing pots, etc. into it for soaking the next dirty items;<\/li>\n<li>Save the water as the shower heats up for flushing toilets and watering indoor plants;<\/li>\n<li>Use a little of that warming-up water to go ahead and soap up so that when it gets warm enough, you can go straight to rinse;<\/li>\n<li>Save the pasta water for washing dishes and watering plants;<\/li>\n<li>Have a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lawn\u00e2\u20ac\u009d made up of natives (grasses, flowers, ground covers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d weeds);<\/li>\n<li>Put every receptacle you own on the deck, patio or other impervious surface when rain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming to more deeply water plants and trees afterwards.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s okay not to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Wash our cars;<\/li>\n<li> Flush every time;<\/li>\n<li> Bathe everyday;<\/li>\n<li> Shave (at least until spring, ladies).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One more point I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not seen mentioned: Making electricity requires water (think about it \u00e2\u20ac\u201d every fuel plant you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen was next to a body of water), therefore, wasting electricity wastes water. So switch to low-energy light bulbs (send your incandescent bulbs to a local temple \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what gets stomped on during a marriage ceremony \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Mazel tov!); leave on only enough lights after dark to accomplish what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing and prevent tripping over the dog; and (my downfall) turn off your computer overnight and unplug battery chargers and appliances when not in use.<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all learned or been reminded that water, that most precious of resources, comes through the whims of Nature, which we humans have messed with to the point of changing her patterns and making us suffer in return.<\/p>\n<p>We either change our ways or start building desalination plants along our coasts to pipe water across the nation. Hmmm, maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the answer to rising shorelines from the melting ice cap. We can drink our oceans.<\/p>\n<p>If you aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to a workshop and want to purchase rain barrels, contact Mark Ray at 636-0617 or m-ray@mindspring.com<\/p>\n<p><em>Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Valarie Schwartz Good news arrived in the mail last week with the OWASA bill: The goal of using only 1,000 gallons of water in my two-person household was reached. With the extra cooking and out-of-state guests in December, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d prepared myself for it to remain at 2,000 gallons. This assuages my guilt over forcing&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[433],"class_list":["post-1696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-recently"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}