The Peculiar Response of Some Californians to Conserving Water

Some of it comes down to rediscovering all those good water habits that we learned during the last long drought. Some of it should probably be enforced through a metering system akin to how we pay for energy, not as a flat fee but relative to a household's use. With some planning, a lot can be done on the municipal and subdevelopment levels to recapture grey water for landscaping, and that landscaping probably ought to go a lot lighter on the decorative use of lawns and heavier on wildflowers, xeriscape and other pretty but drought tolerant plants.

Finally, and the funding for this probably would have to come from the federal level to a degree, if we want Central Valley farmers to go a bit easier on our region's water resources, we need to provide grants to upgrade irrigation equipment (and transition off of some crops that just have no business being grown there, although that whole issue is a lot more complicated to ag folks than it seems at first glance to suburbanites irritated at water restrictions, looking for scapegoats). In essence, we need to make more water by using less, but such mandates shouldn't come at the cost of bankrupting farmers, especially the smaller ones who won't have the capital to make such investments on their own.

Mostly, we need to realize that our collective behavior has got to improve a bit, and that while it's fine to denounce those SoCal/San Joaquin water thieves and their accursed aquaduct (why didn't anyone ever bother to cover that thing, BTW?), the Valley's got a long ways to go before we can claim to have removed the beam from our own eye.

As with oil, as with electricity, as with most things that we depend upon but don't value until they're almost gone, civilization depends upon a steady supply of water. We can't make rain fall from the sky, but we can make more out of thin air just by using it more intelligently. To do that, we have to get past this arrogant attitude that treats any common resource as something to be carelessly wasted and trashed, and any call for responsible behavior as fascist repression.

As with so many things, it's time for Californians to grow up about water. There is more than enough for a beautiful, comfortable state, but it has to be used intelligently, and we have to get past this attitude of waste as conspicuous consumption. Being upstream doesn't get us out of the responsibility to conserve our water.

And for god's sake, people, pick up a broom to sweep the sidewalk. Using a hose is like Homer Simpson opening beer cans with his gun; it's overkill. Besides, most of us need the exercise anyways.

Wu Ming is the nom de blog used by a graduate student in Yolo County at the site Surf Putah where this article originally appeared. This article is republished with his permission.