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Drastic Water Restrictions Coming To Austin


This is huge. For a large metropolitan area like Austin to impose such restrictions is drastic, to say the least. But the spillover effects will be no less disastrous: the (permanent?) loss of vegetation and its follow on effects, the dust, the loss of businesses and manufacturing that need water security. I remember several years ago when USAA threatened to leave San Antonio, where it is headquartered, if they did not lock down their water supply for at least forty years. San Antonio did this by going out and buying a lot of water from the LCRA, which just happens to provide Austin will all its water. These are costs people rarely take into consideration..

And in the meantime the wealthy water hogs in Austin continue to water their yards. See this for a non-wealthy yard and this from a rich street in Austin for comparison.


Sean Paul Kelley October 19, 2011 - 9:52am
Sean Paul Kelley's diary | printer friendly version | digg
( categories: Environment | Global Warming | USA: Texas )

Always felt grass was unnatural outside a prarie

except for that kind of grass :-)
Much prefer whatever vegetation is native to an area.


"When you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around which you navigate each day.
Credit leads into a desert with invisible boundaries."
- Anton Chekhov

steeleweed October 19, 2011 - 11:16am
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If you ask me...

In Texas, yards should have desert plants, not stupid grass! So, if you are poor but you still want to have plants, just get desert plants! :)

creativelcro October 19, 2011 - 1:23pm
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All your desert plants

would have drowned in the summer of '07 here in Austin.

I think it's important to use plants that don't require irrigation to survive, but Central Texas isn't a desert (yet), so that does not mean desert plants.

chalo October 19, 2011 - 2:07pm
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Residential water

should be charged on some kind of log scale. First 100 gallons of water per household person per month free. Then next 1000 gallons $x per month and the next 1000 after that $10x etc. That's with no drought. Then you jigger the numbers in increasing drought.

I guess, though, there are some people so awash with money that it still wouldn't register with them. Hopefully it would be so small a number that the actual water wasted would not be that great. Then too their lawns would kinda begin to stick out like sore thumbs waiting to be whacked by OWSers.

But yeah, the really hard decisions will come down to business and farming/ranching users.

Jeff Wegerson October 19, 2011 - 3:35pm
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