Thinking about the drought

I've had a couple of real-world conversations about the drought in the past few days, and i guess i'm not expressing myself as clearly as i'd like.

First off, read this little article by Matt in the N&O.

The city's Lake Michie reservoir is full, while the Little River reservoir us about five feet blow full.

Durham now has 361 days of water available at Michie, the Little River and Teer Quarry.

Meanwhile, city officials said demand dipped below 20 million gallons per day last week. City leaders have expressed concern that Durham residents will stop conserving water as vigilantly because of the recent rains.

City Manager Patrick Baker said staff members will talk this week about possibly dropping water restrictions from Stage IV to Stage III, which would allow some outdoor irrigation. But Baker said he didn't think the move was likely.

City Councilman Eugene Brown noted the city's water supply was at this level in May. By December, the city had only about a month of easily accessible drinking water left.

If the city has another dry, hot summer like last year's, Durham could find itself in the same boat should conservation efforts flag, Brown and other city leaders have said.

I quite understand that another summer like this past one could deplete that 361 days of water in less than 200 days. We do need to keep our conservation efforts up as individuals.

But, as individuals, we're only able to conserve on the margins, to use an old Econ 101 term. Based on population, there's a certain structural level of water use built into the system. Planners like to use 120 gallons per day per person as the overall level of use. We've actually been below that for most of the past 5 months or so. Our 200,000 plus population has been averaging around 20 million gallons per day, or 100 gallons per person. Please note, that figure includes industrial and commercial uses, as well as water lost in transfer and through evaporation. It does not mean that the average household is being billed for 100 gallons per person per day.

The point, though, is that Durham is currently storing all of the water it is capable of storing. We didn't design the system to store more water, because we've never needed to. But individual conservation efforts can only go so far, even if everybody is on board. So, given that we're using our system as best we can, and it is still inadequate to provide a quality of life* that we've come to expect, why are we adding to our water supply needs by continuing to approve new development all throughout the county and city? If the system is inadequate, how can we justify stressing it further? How can we justify adding more demands on the system if we're going to turn to our new residents and say, "Welcome to Durham. Oh, by the way, don't flush. And don't even think about watering that new landscaping you just paid your builder an extra $5,000 to put in."

I've done my part to lower my water consumption. Quite honestly, i'm using less water than i did when i lived in California's drought stricken Central Valley in the early 90s. Where i was still able to grow a vegetable garden, by the way.

If the problem is as serious as all that, and i believe that it is, then our leaders need to do more than just ask the residents to keep conserving. Other segments of the community need to be biting the bullet as well.

UPDATE: Todd has posted some good ideas in the comments. Go read them.

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* I don't know about you, but keeping a bucket in the tub to catch all my warming up shower water to use to flush the toilet, and not being able to grow vegetables or brew beer are definitely negative factors in my quality of life. If they're going to be permanent restrictions, as a result of poor planning and poor decision making, this place just got a whole lot less attractive as a place to live.