Colorado River water usage

Wow that was eye opening. I removed the grass in my yard and replaced it with a spreading rosemary plant that doesn’t need much water. I also put in a lavender border that doesn’t need much water. The only thing that requires regular watering out front is my flower pots and the small flower bed near the sidewalk. I received a letter from the water district telling me that in doing this, I cut my water consumption by 44%. I also started doing what I call a camping shower. I turn the water on, get wet, turn it off, soap up and shampoo my hair, and turn the water back on to rinse all the soap off. I don’t know how much water it saves to shut it off like that but just the thought of water pouring down the drain while I am soaping is too wasteful for me. Plus, my shower isn’t all that large that I can get away from the spray and I don’t want the soap washed off too soon. My downfall is that I have a pool and I’m sure the evaporation is horribly wasteful. I know I have to keep an eye on the water level all the time.

Besides changing out my landscaping and changing the way I shower, I also don’t hose down the driveway anymore. I used to do that every week after I cut the grass. Not having the grass mess has cut down the need, but I would still like to hose the driveway down maybe monthly. I haven’t done it though. I sweep instead.

I guess I answered your question for what I have personally changed, not what I would come up with for the state.  Well, I suppose we could all do a camping shower and get rid of our grass.

"understand, the climate issues aren't waiting. They're here." 100% THIS!

I've been teaching about the impending disaster on the Colorado River watershed for years now in my Environmental Science and Sustainability classes. We knew this was coming. But the reality is worse than even the most pessimistic models, which scares the crap out of me.

Our country has willfully covered it's ears and closed it's eyes and sang lalala forever and pretended there wasn't an issue for decades. Hell, the water in the Colorado River was overallocated from the beginning in the 1920s. We ignored the warning signs, we kept building more cities and growing food crops in the desert. And now, this is going to hurt in ways that you can't imagine.

We need a fundamental change in the way we produce our food. 70% of available freshwater in this country is used for agriculture. Due to subsidies, industrial farming, concentrated animal feedlots, globalization, and many other environmentally hostile practices, we have the cheapest food in the world and can eat any type of produce in the dead of winter. I think that the latest figures that I saw were that we spend only about 6% of our income on food, among the lowest of any nation. We do not pay the true cost of producing our food. We are draining our rivers and aquifers dry producing vast quantities of low quality cheap food.

We need a wholesale fundamental change in the way we produce our food, along with a pricing structure that takes into account the environmental and social damage producing it causes.

Personal water conservation strategies like not allowing lawns or car washing and conserving water use in your home are important because every drop of water is going to count, but they pale in magnitude to the consumption of water by agriculture. 

I'm pretty crap at articulating my answer when I'm asked why I "stopped eating meat", but your post sums it up quite nicely.  

The amount of natural resources used in (industrial) agriculture is astronomical and completely unsustainable. It is killing the planet and everything that lives on it. Mad Max, here we come! Guns and deserts!!

Desalination plants come with their own problems as they are high energy users, contribute significantly to greenhouse gases and the increased salinity of the ocean impacts marine life.

That being said, there are 12 in California right now. The largest is in Carlsbad (San Diego County) and has been up and running since 2015, providing 10% of the water used in the County.

More and more of our neighbors are taking out lawns and going with drought resistant xeriscapes.

Adding graywater systems to homes is another way we can more efficiently use/reuse water.  

We've been burying our head in the sand about water issues for the entire time I have been alive. I vividly remember my dad talking about being in a drought when I was 6. Well guess what, it's now been proven we've been in one for WAY longer than that and have never truly come out of it. Yet I constantly see more lawns, more swimming pools, more car washes.

Why don't we capture our rain water? Why don't we normalize wearing clothing more than once or twice before washing it? I'd be 100% ok with a ban on installation of lawns. We need drought resistant landscaping. And it can be done beautifully with native plants, it doesn't have to be ugly. Local governments and companies need to be on board too. Every single day I drive through a high school that has sprinklers watering some big medians between the school and the road. It makes me so angry. Those medians do not need to be kept green. It's incredibly wasteful.

Almond milk is a big one.


If your lawn can't naturally stay green, don't have one
Shut down Las Vegas
Don't live where the earth can't support you
Stop fighting pandemics and natural disasters, the earth is clearly trying to shrug us off

Just some impractical thoughts...

So actually of all of the metropolitan areas taking the water, Vegas is doing a pretty good job of curbing usage.  They have adopted a lot of innovative measures that have made a real difference.  

Oh crap.  I drink almond milk.  What is your alternative.  Oat milk?  Soy milk?  To be fair, I don’t drink milk from a glass anymore.  The only beverage I drink is ice water.  I use the almond milk on my oatmeal but I will have no problem switching.

I do the toilet thing with the upstairs toilets and try to avoid using the downstairs one, leaving it for guests. We have never flushed at night because I grew up in a house with a light sleeper who complained that the flush woke them.  It made me learn to stop night flushing.

This is another small change, but I pulled my sprinkler system and water by hand because it is less wasteful. Time consuming, but at least there isn’t the large waste.

I have also noticed that my city has been redoing the medians with low water plants and a few with spots of artificial grass.  I have always been curious about the maintenance of artificial grass.  How do they clean it? Do they have to use a blower or a bag-containment vacuum on it?

we heard inklings about this last year- the water usage issues is one of the reasons I wanted to leave Arizona.  Not because we used a lot of water personally, but because I knew the weather and water issues would just get worse and worse for the whole state. 

off to watch his video now. 

eta:  we never had an entire lawn of grass (just a small patch) and the last house didn't even have that- just xeriscaping.  We also didn't have a pool.  I think the developers lied at least a little (probably a LOT) because supposedly, they had to show that there was a water supply for something like 50-75 years (?) in order to get a new housing development approved.  But in the DESERT, I just don't believe that could be true-- not nearly enough water for the thousands of houses they built. 

When we lived in Maricopa (a town south of Phoenix that experienced HUGE hypergrowth + a huge CRASH during the 2000s housing crisis) our house was serviced by a PRIVATE, FOR-PROFIT water company whose headquarters are in Canada.  It cost us NINETY DOLLARS just to get the water TO OUR HOUSE!  That was before we ever even flushed a toilet or turned on a faucet.  And the Arizona Corporation Commission kept approving huge rate increases-- the company said they couldn't recoup their infrastructure investment because of the housing crash.  (but they also had to keep their profit margin up for their shareholders.)

I think a lot of golf courses already use gray water for irrigation...  they really need to look at the agricultural usage, cut down on the feed lots and stop raising cattle / feed for the cattle, and look at the water that's used during building-  in those new housing developments, water trucks would drive around and spray down the dirt to keep down the dust.  (because poor air quality due to high particulate counts was also a prevalent problem.)

In general, I was always amazed at the amount of commercial and residential development there was around Phoenix-- everywhere you looked, there was another housing development or commercial development going up.  Even though there were PLENTY of existing houses, and empty commercial properties, they keep building more.  I think they should also severely restrict that to help reduce water / utility usage. 

not specifically related to the Colorado River watershed, but manufacturing clothing uses a HUGE amount of water also, I think... I follow a few people on Instagram who are very much into 'mending' (with very cool sewing, btw) and fixing their clothes instead of constantly buying new and trying to get out of the 'fast fashion / very cheap quality' clothing trap.

In addition to the 'wash it the minute you take it off' attitude that some people have about wearing clothes, as already mentioned above.

I don't think manufacturing clothing uses nearly as much water as you think. Now, growing conventional cotton requires significant amounts of water and a boatload of pesticides, but the only clothing manufacturing that I know of that requires moderate amounts of water is leather tanning and such. 

Very little clothing is made in the US, so this doesn't figure significantly into our domestic fresh water issues. But if you want an eye opening view of the environmental and social costs of clothing manufacturing in other developing nations, especially the manufacture of 'fast fashion,' I highly recommend the film "The True Cost." 

I love all the new emphasis on "visible mending" that I see these days. Our 21 year old DD has developed quite a talent for this type of hand embroidery and refreshing clothing that might otherwise get thrown away. So much fun!

"Irrigated agriculture is the largest user of water in Arizona, consuming about 74 percent of the available water supply."


THAT is why.

Ag use is why a lot of these canals were created. Then people moved in and took the water too. It's a complicated matter for sure. But something does have to change. People waste SO much water!

I was listening to an interview with a guy (can't remember his exact title) and he said actually the casinos do a good job (they are the first place people usually point fingers) - but he would make green lawns illegal.