Editor:
Folks whining about our water shortage and suggesting “solutions” like accessing more to use more (Clowhom) or using our aquifers need a serious wake-up call. Aquifers take thousands of years to fill. Seventy per cent of North American drinking water is used on domestic lawns and gardens each season. Unsustainable. With climate change, that season is expanding. Lawns suck water and were never meant to grow here. Ditto annuals people buy to “perk up” their gardens in spring. Both need a minimum of eight inches of humus-rich, moist topsoil to thrive. Who on the Coast has that?
If you find winters dreary and must have tropical flowers to make you happy, move to the tropics, because when it comes down to you watering your annuals or my family having water to drink, which do you think I would support?
I would go further. Meters? Mandatory and installed yesterday. Rainwater catchment systems? Subsidized and mandatory, with only water collected used outdoors. In very dry years, metered grey or tap water used only on edible plants and trees. Plant native and drought-hardy ground covers, flowers, shrubs, vines and trees in the fall once the rains have started. You will never need to water them again.
The world is running out of drinking water. Only one-third of one per cent of the water on earth is drinkable. Industrial pollution and population continue to rise. Corporations take and sell us back our water and worse, buy “water rights” around the globe. In some jurisdictions it is illegal to collect rainwater on your own property because someone owns the “rights.” Twenty-five years ago, NASA warned us that the next wars would be about access to drinkable water. They were right. We can live without oil, but not without drinking water.
Be grateful for the quantity and quality of our drinking water. Two billion people on the planet don’t have access to potable water, right now. Unless we want to join them, we need to wake up and treat water like the precious gift it is.
Carole Rubin, Garden Bay
