We were discussing hauled water and the conversation took a natural turn to private water companies. I wonder if private water companies restrict usage differently than public municipalities? I would think they would. I noticed in the Daily Courier the council decided not to curtail water usage for landscape irrigation.
The article called the restrictions "heavy-handed." It seems like we are struggling to provide water to the community and here was a simple measure to manage usage. I want our community to be a beautiful place but I also want the future protected. When you think about where our water comes from and the expense of our future needs, it doesn't seem as "heavy-handed" in my mind. See the courier article here regarding the current cost of the Big Chino Pipeline. Also, considering that we are in an official drought, is this even responsible?
If you read the article there's a reference to the recently defeated annexation effort. It's being tied back to the impact fees the City had hoped to recoup from development. It seems like talking about abandoning the pipeline over costs and then not taking some stand on water usage is a contradiction of intention. Grandfathered rights would probably be an intelligent decision. I know, I know, it's the old "I got mine - now go away" mindset, but we have to start somewhere. New construction and development would be a reasonable place to implement policy changes. I think we pay now or we pay a lot more later. It's like Hubble's Law of the expanding universe in reverse; the closer we get to the future the faster it's coming at us. No doubt water is going to be more of a driving force in our political climate.
The New York Times had an article realted to water in the Southwest a few weeks ago which is among the best I've read so far.
I think people making decisions about our water future would be well served to read the article.
There is probably more than a whole blogs worth of information in the article and I'll probably be referring to to again.
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