It’s going to be another sunny day in Raleigh, North Carolina. Unfortunately, that’s not good news, considering our county has only a three month supply of water left. What is really sad is that the situation did not need to become quite this critical. We are in this situation because community leaders refuse to make the hard decisions that the situation calls for.
With such a critical shortage of water, why was the order to stop all outside watering of lawns delayed until yesterday? I quit watering my lawn at the beginning of the summer because I saw the futility of it. My wife and I will need to make some decisions over the winter about the wisdom of planting even our small garden next summer if the scarcity of rain continues past this winter. And it looks like that is going to be the reality.
I would love to take our vehicles to the car wash and get them spruced up. But after seeing the pictures of Falls Lake, which supplies Raleigh with the majority of its water, I can’t justify such frivolous use of such a precious commodity. My having a glass of water to drink in March is more important to me than having a clean car to drive now.
I guess that puts me in the minority. In fact there are some homeowner’s associations in the area who think having green grass is more important than conserving water, going so far as to threaten fines and penalties if their members let their lawns go brown, even though watering will earn them a fine from the county.
One of the reasons given by the city council for not imposing the strictest water conservation guidelines was concern over losing jobs. The last thing I want is for anyone to have trouble providing for themselves or their families. But I don’t think earning a paycheck is going to do any of us any good if we don’t have water to drink. And even if we all move to bottled water, I don’t want to have to drink it sitting next to someone who hasn’t been able to bathe in months. Never mind what’s going to happen if there’s no water to flush our toilets!
Conservation is not going to end the drought. Only Mother Nature can do that. But we can at least guarantee being able to sit out the dry spell a little longer if we all do our part to save even just a little bit of water every day.
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