Abstract Thursday : : Water

Local government just never does seem to run smoothly. It suffers from all the bureaucratic ills arising from not wanting to take chances or upset anyone. But by its very nature nobody in local government (or any government for that matter) can please everybody. So they bumble along doing endless studies a (which cost endless amounts of money) but not much ever seems to happen.

With the weather heating up again and the drought intensifying, a number of environmental agencies are suing Sonoma county for allowing too many groundwater wells. The lawsuit seeks a court order preventing any more drilling permits until officials 'enact new requirements for site-specific and watershed-wide assessments.' They cite  water agencies' tendencies  to operate on a 'legal fiction that groundwater and surface water are separate systems.

 Although we are on a groundwater well, I would tend to agree. What I would add is that while the agricultural interests (mainly wine and cannabis growers) in the county use 80% percent of the water, individual households like ours only use 20%. It's a sticky question but it does need to be addressed. I would guess that they should begin by metering the water use of well users.

So far we've been told that we need to cut back 20% over last year's use. Since our well isn't metered, we have no way of knowing exactly how much water we have been using, but having been through droughts before, many people were already drastically cutting down last year. Cutting down a further 20% might be impossible.

We have a bucket in the shower and a big bowl of water in the kitchen sink, low flow shower heads and toilets and a dead front lawn. We put just enough water on our plants to keep them alive and held off replacing a lot of plants that were destroyed in the fire. Most of what we do have is  drought tolerant and requires little to no water. We planted five trees because we felt that despite the fact that they need to be watered until they are established, their contributions to the fight against global warming are significant.

For all these reasons, I resorted to our recirculating fountain for some abstract water shots. Because it is hot (95F just now), the algae is thriving, giving the pond a slimy greenish look. For that reason, I preferred  the mono version.

Tomorrow, because everybody always has a lot of zucchini, Kathy and her husband are coming over and we are having a 'zucchini cook-off happy hour'. Menu is evolving....