6 thoughts on “Storm Water, Long a Nuisance, May Be a Parched California’s Salvation”
Some of the dams in California have already received orders to increase discharge rates to waste water down to the sea, rather than rebuild levels behind the dams. To Mr. JTW, for some time, 50% of the available water has been wasted downstream for “environmental purposes”, 40% has been allocated for agriculture, and only 10% allowed for business and residential use. Homes and agriculture have been required to cut back but not environmental use. I suspect that this year, a larger proportion will be wasted, with no consideration for people. I like to eat, and that means I’m dependent on agriculture, the only source of food.
A far better solution to the whole problem is to do away with the millions of acres of manicured laws and golf courts, and change California’s agriculture to grow less water intensive crops.
But that would mean people actually doing something rather than just feel-good measures like putting up a rain barrel.
Rain runoff and snowmelt in the San Gabriel Mountains to the east of Los Angeles normally runs in the San Gabriel River into spreading grounds along the river’s course. Some excess may eventually make it to the sea near Long Beach.
In the not-to-distant past, in some parts of the country you could be arrested and prosecuted for trapping rain water from your roof in a barrel. You had no right to interfere in the “natural flow of water!”
Rain water picks up pollutants on its way TO the ground: pollen, soot, dust, etc.
Then it also picks up pollutants even on rooftops – courtesy of incontinent birds and bugs.
Unfiltered and unsterilized rainwater is NOT potable water.
Every open barrel will make a lovely mosquito breeding ground.
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Some of the dams in California have already received orders to increase discharge rates to waste water down to the sea, rather than rebuild levels behind the dams. To Mr. JTW, for some time, 50% of the available water has been wasted downstream for “environmental purposes”, 40% has been allocated for agriculture, and only 10% allowed for business and residential use. Homes and agriculture have been required to cut back but not environmental use. I suspect that this year, a larger proportion will be wasted, with no consideration for people. I like to eat, and that means I’m dependent on agriculture, the only source of food.
A far better solution to the whole problem is to do away with the millions of acres of manicured laws and golf courts, and change California’s agriculture to grow less water intensive crops.
But that would mean people actually doing something rather than just feel-good measures like putting up a rain barrel.
Rain runoff and snowmelt in the San Gabriel Mountains to the east of Los Angeles normally runs in the San Gabriel River into spreading grounds along the river’s course. Some excess may eventually make it to the sea near Long Beach.
In the not-to-distant past, in some parts of the country you could be arrested and prosecuted for trapping rain water from your roof in a barrel. You had no right to interfere in the “natural flow of water!”
Rain water picks up pollutants on its way TO the ground: pollen, soot, dust, etc.
Then it also picks up pollutants even on rooftops – courtesy of incontinent birds and bugs.
Unfiltered and unsterilized rainwater is NOT potable water.
Every open barrel will make a lovely mosquito breeding ground.