A Different Opinion About Water Conservation
In California where droughts are a regular occurrence throughout our history, water conservation by itself is not going to solve our drought problem.
California is a magnet state for anyone, anywhere that doesn't like weather. Be it snow or rain or hurricanes, tornadoes, you name it, people have flocked to California. All these people consume water. They bath in it, they drink it , they water their lawns and landscaping just like everyone from all the states with plenty of it.
The edicts from our state government is to significantly cut back water use, especially water use outside. These sounds logical but in fact exacerbates the difficulty with a drought over the longer term. Conservationists want to prevent waste and it would be a natural assumption to just cut back further and further.
So why is this not the best tactic, the conservation at all expense, killing off the grass and the assuming that strong plants and trees will live and the weak ones will just die off anyway. To start with, lawns, plants and flowers serve a vital purpose. They look good of course when well arranged but they do important things like absorb co2, give off oxygen and help sustain ground water. If you actually understand climate change, you would think people would appreciate knowing this. The plants and grass intercept water where it helps to replenish the groundwater and helps to cool the earth. Instead of excess water going down the city drain to the ocean in our case, the excess water should be diverted to dry areas to replenish the life of the soil.
The consequences of unchecked conservation allows not only the plants and grass to die, it also dries out the soil and for purposes of understanding what too much conservation does, it kills the soil. It dries it out and allows it to erode. What little ground water remains will evaporate as well.
The better approach would encourage a lot less hot cement and macadam and plant more shrubs and tress creating needed shade and prevent more of the evaporation that takes place by the heat of the sun. Think about a forest. It tends to be heavily shaded by heat absorbing trees but the soil is protected and life below the top of the tress is naturally lush and moist.
Interestingly, this type of logic requires less and less water. I draw the conclusion that we are not teaching people how to properly conserve water, turning off the water and allowing everything to die is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Plant more, bigger and shadier foliage and this type of conservation is the natural way to conserve the water resources. Besides that, it maintains the beauty and pride of home ownership and community life. It benefits the life of the soil as well as conserves the groundwater, vital for sustaining the life of the earth that everyone wants to protect.
On a personal level, my grass is all but dead already and the likely solution I will take is to remove all the grass. Remove the top dried out soil layer and replace with moisture conserving material and re sod the the grass areas. I will also add a couple fast growing shade trees and add more shrubbery wherever possible. However, I will not do this until the cooler Fall weather and as for this summer, I will just be proud of the dead grass and dirt yard knowing that I followed the advise of those that knew even less than I do.
There is much to said about our drought and ways to permanently prepare for the amount of water needed for consumer use. But like most issues, those who are not very knowledgeable about how to conserve and build reserves take the easy way out and just increase the cost of the reduced use. Teaching those who are the decision makers seems to be a wasted effort because they simply are not interested.
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