Okay so we all know this year is a hard water year right?Yeah that's what I thought, but how many of you took the time to think about our poor water management skills ? Before I begin, I'm just gonna get this out of the way...I don't have any factual statistics and won't be taking the time to look them up but in my observation, I've noticed several things.
1. We had a stretch this summer where it was raining almost every day. Lots of people and companies still had their sprinklers running as it was raining!
2. Basically every day when I go to my gym Lifetime fitness, I turn onto riverfront parkway street from 10400 South and see a fountain running on that corner as I make the turn. Should we or do we really need fountains using water just to make our drive more scenic?
3. The Canals by my house are still full as ever and they don't need to be. I've lived at my home all 19 years so I know how the use of that irrigation canal goes. It's totally full all year and then its completely drained by october/novemberish. By lowering the water level even by a foot or 2, lots of water would be saved and not wasted(it'd keep UT lake a little higher and less water would be evaporated in the baking sun.
4. I forgot the stat but my highschool's baseball coach(who at the time was the man in charge of watering the field) said they watered the field only once per week or once every two weeks(I forget but it was one of the two). The class he taught was science research and we had a discussion about this and he specifically said we don't need to be watering our lawns every night and no, they wouldn't be brown//yellow if we didn't.
5. Lots of our hygene time uses extra water that doesn't need to. How many of you(I'm guilty myself) leave the water running as you're brushing your teeth? Also, think about the last time you took a bath...did you really need to fill it up all the way?
Can't think of anything else at the moment but I'm sure either you or I will. But yeah, I think our low water years are greatly exaggerated because of our poor water management skills. Does anyone else agree/disagree or have any other comments?
[signature]
Yes we are poor managers as the human race goes. A great example is Las Vegas. Large fountains in front of large casinos in the desert.
[signature]
[quote FishingLunatic]I don't have any factual statistics and won't be taking the time to look them up[/quote]
[crazy] [crazy] [crazy]
[signature]
[quote dubob][quote FishingLunatic]I don't have any factual statistics and won't be taking the time to look them up[/quote]
[crazy] [crazy] [crazy][/quote]
^^^^THIS^^^^^^
[signature]
Instead of adding fuel to the fire when it comes to water managment ou in the west* why don't you call the state water board and request to speak to the chief hydrologist?
*what I mean by ths is since your posting anything to do with water managment in one of the driest states in the west, some will read this as blatant fact because its easy for them to do without any type of research
[signature]
Well honestly I only made the topic cause I kept reading report after report about how the water was so low that the gate to the ramp was closed and I had to haul my stuff all the way down, fish different spots than normal, etc. People like TD have been joking about how we might have to dig a hole in dirt and drop our poles in it for ice fishing. It's a joke that's meant to be kidding but in a shallow lake like Utah Lake, it isn't out of this realm if we continue to do poor water management skills especially during poor water years.
This is where your guys being older and wiser comes into play...I didn't even think of contacting the state hydrologist [
]
That's definitely a good idea but I think there is legitly a better chance of pigs plying that the state hydrologist listen to some 19 year old kid. [:/]
[signature]
Well I really just wanted to get this topic/conversation started but tomorrow or a little bit later I'll look for some statistics such as the amount of gallons of water we use bathing, to water our lawns, etc.
Totally switching gears- I don't know any details of the fires that recently happened/are going on, but we cause many wild fires and guess what we use to put that out? [
]. This in addition to everything I said in my observations was factual...if we really cared about water levels then do we really need to be running sprinklers every day, or on days where it's raining period? I don't really think it's debatable to say we don't some pretty wasteful(wanted to say stupid) things with water is it?
I'm not even just talking about this year...just think of next year if we don't get a good winter or in the future when there's even more people on earth. Lots of very easy things could be done(I'll later have statistics to show you guys specifically what we're using water for that we shouldn't).
[signature]
H2O is the new gold. Utah is so messed up when it comes to water:
see below from this article:
[url "http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/02/08/utah-water-experts-issue-dire-warning-waste-less-water"]http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/02/08/utah-water-experts-issue-dire-warning-waste-less-water[/url]
Frankel told listeners gathered in WSU’s Wildcat Theater that only 25 percent of Utah’s municipal water use takes place indoors. Seventy-five percent takes place outdoors, mostly for landscape. And because use of secondary water is not metered, there is no penalty for wasteful and excessive watering.
“We could reduce outdoor water use by 25 percent without losing a single blade of grass,” Frankel said. “We don’t need to be afraid of running out of water. We are the most wasteful per capita water users in the United States, and it’s because of our cheap water rates.”
[signature]
I couldn't agree more. I know some of my neighbors leave there water sprinklers on for days at a time in the same place without even moving them. I know sprinkler systems cost money to install but they save huge amounts of water and time by not have to move the hose from one spot to another, not to mention when you forget to move them and leave them on oiver night[crazy]. One thing our city did recently, was to charge us not only for the water the we use in our house but now they charge us for water that goes out of our house and down the drain. I had to complain about this because they assumed that all the water coming into the house was also going down the drain. If your city is not charging you for water going down your drain yet, it will happen soon, just another way for the city to bring in more money. There is little doubt that the day will come when they will put a water meter on your secondary water line and charge you for it like they do for culinary use.
[signature]
[quote wiperhunter2]There is little doubt that the day will come when they will put a water meter on your secondary water line and charge you for it like they do for culinary use.[/quote][font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000]Curt,[/#800000][/font]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000][/#800000][/font]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000]I'm actually hoping they do this sooner than later. With a flat rate per year regardless of how much you use, there is a very great incentive to use as much as you can or just don't care about how much you use a/o waste. So the conservative minded folks that do their part are paying a higher RATE for their secondary water than the folks that just let it run. If it's metered, at least folks will only pay for what they use and the wasters will get a rude awakening in the form of a very high bill. Bring it on. We need it now, not 5 or 10 years from now. And make it exponential so that the more you waste, the higher your rate and therefore bill.[
][/#800000][/font]
[signature]
My secondary is already on a meter, I notice my bill goes up during the summer.
[signature]
[quote FishingLunatic] I don't have any factual statistics and won't be taking the time to look them up but in my observation, I've noticed several things.[/quote]
Observation made people think the wold was flat. Look up the facts Utah's would be in drought regardless if everyone saved water. We live in a freaking desert
[quote FishingLunatic]
see a fountain running on that corner as I make the turn. Should we or do we really need fountains using water just to make our drive more scenic? [/quote]
Allot of Fountains regurgitate water you fill them up, then a pump recycles it.
[quote FishingLunatic]we don't need to be watering our lawns every night and no, they wouldn't be brown//yellow if we didn't.[/quote]
This is true you dont need to water you lawn everyday
Yes we as human being use allot of water but not researching and looking up the facts before you attempt to criticize doesn't hold allot of weight.
[signature]
I don't know how you pay your secondary water bill but mine is tied into my property tax, I have a certain amount of water share rights. Maybe every city is different, I'm not sure.
[signature]
I pay mine monthly with my city utilities.
[signature]
Man, this'un jerks my chain. I watch water being wasted daily and think / wonder how much longer can we do so.
Now that the release from Lake Powell is being cut back, Lake Mead is going to drop like a stone. This will shortly threaten Las Vegas' water supply adding impetus to the idiotic idea of pumping water out of the Snake Valley aquifer to support those fountains and swimming pools. We here in Utah need to get up in arms about this far more than we have up to this point. If the pumping plan comes to pass, I'm betting the first manifestation of the foolishness of the project will be when Big Spring in the south end of Snake Valley dries up. There will go the water for Pruess Lake and better than half of the irrigation water for the farms at Garrison.
The pipeline from Lake Powell to St. George is another folly. The Colorado River is already over allocated. So Utah has rights to some more water out of it. Big deal. Even if we were entitled to all of it, there's enough reason to legally deny it to us and enough money to back the claim. Instead of a pipeline from Lake Powell, Why don't we plan our own pumping project out of the Snake Valley Aquifer?
[signature]
Observation made people think the wold was flat. Look up the facts Utah's would be in drought regardless if everyone saved water. We live in a freaking desert
That's totally different. Our water levels would drop but 3 summers ago(counting this 1) we had one our historic high water years. If we didn't waste water on the aforementioned things during those years between then and now, I'd be willing to bet all the lakes would be nearly full still.
Allot of Fountains regurgitate water you fill them up, then a pump recycles it.
Evaporation process still happens and the whole point is that rather than put water in this silly fountain, we could let the water stay in the original source and not waste it for the silly excuse of a more scenic drive.!
This is true you dont need to water you lawn everyday
That's a stat I should look for...% of utahn's that water their lawn every day. I bet it's higher than you think.
Yes we as human being use allot of water but not researching and looking up the facts before you attempt to criticize doesn't hold allot of weight.[/quote]
I think everyone knows we waste a lot of water. I don't really think its worth the time to stall and have exact statistics rather than simply control what we can. Frankly, I think it's embarrassing if there are statistics made about how much we waste water and still haven't done anything about it. But here's a start..
"Based on the percentages of all types of irrigation practices (nearly two-thirds have automatic sprinkler systems), the study found that Utahns, on average, over-water their yards by nearly 20 percent (Figure 9). Even though Utah’s climate requires substantial irrigation to maintain healthy turf grass, if residents were to practice more efficient irrigation principles outdoor residential water use could be reduced by a substantial amount. "
http://www.water.utah.gov/Reports/MUNICI...20UTAH.pdf
[signature]
[quote FishingLunatic]Frankly, I think it's embarrassing if there are statistics made about how much we waste water and still haven't done anything about it.[url "http://www.water.utah.gov/Reports/MUNICIPAL%20AND%20INDUSTRIAL%20WATER%20USE%20in%20UTAH.pdf%5b/quote%5d/t_blank"][/quote][/url][font "Century Gothic"][#800000]Frankly, I think you're embarrassing yourself. All you've done so far is complain about a situation that most reasonable people would agree is a problem. However, you have not presented one, single viable recommendation to solve or limit the problem. Anybody can complain about the obvious and we have way too much of that in society already. Climb out of the box and offer some real solutions. "We've got to stop wasting water" ain't cuttin' it.[/#800000][/font]
[font "Arial"]
[font "Century Gothic"][#800000]Secondary water comes from a lot of different sources in Utah. And each business entity has their own system for selling their product. My source (Hooper Irrigation Co Secondary) charges a flat rate for 12 months each year with their own billing. Others add it to your property taxes which are paid once a year. And still others use meters.[/#800000][/font]
[font "Century Gothic"][#800000]I would propose that all of them use meters and charge according to actual usage and have a graduated rate that charges more for higher usage, thereby giving folks an incentive to use less. Folks with very deep pockets would still use more than they needed, but for most of us it would produce a conscientious effort to reduce our usage and contribute to conserving the resource.[/#800000][/font]
[font "Century Gothic"][#800000]That may not be the best solution and it certainly isn't the only solution, but it's more than what you've offered so far. So how about it FL - would you care to stop embarrassing yourself and offer a recommendation?[/#800000][/font]
[/font]
[signature]
What's to be embarrassed about? Complaining like I am which might spark a solution from others, or just sitting there saying nothing when you know there's a problem? Anyway, here's the 6 things I said we waste
1-Sprinklers running while it's raining. What can we do? Turn them off of course! Or we could make water usage more expensive, or (not sure if possible/how water travel totally works) have the government or whoever of water shut off our water...Kind of like how if you don't pay for electricity, heating, and utilities how they shut those off.
2-Fountains serving as for decoration. What can we do? Decorate the area with rocks,stones, boulders, logs,twigs, etc. Or we could have higher prices on water.
3-Not wasting Canal Water. What can we do? Lower the water level of the canal. I'm sure there's some sort of dam system like with the Jordan River, so simply put:don't allow as much to get through the dam. Every year like I said, those canals get drained and there's about 2-3 feet of water that sits there once they stop letting the water run, and that gradually drains into the ground.
4-Not overwatering /sprinklering our gardens. What can we do? Educate ourselves on just how much water is really needed to care care of the yard. Increase prices to use over a certain ammount of water. Or simply have a limit of how much water each house hold can use(Don't make it a money thing, make it so everyone has x-amount of gallons of water they can use and once its used, turn off their supply of irrigation water.
5-Making our hygene water efficient. What can we do? Educate ourselves and change our ways! Remember to turn off the water when we're brushing our teeth or doing our hair. Then, don't fill up your bathtub brim high or take a quick shower instead. Then of course there's the higher pricing or water restriction plans.
6-Reducing the amount of fires we cause. What can we do? Make fireworks, smoking, and other potential fire starters to be illegal in anywhere there's a high risk. In your own home, keep flammable objects away from things that can catch fire!
So the options are pretty much increases prices, have a flat amount of water that each household can use use(and can't pay more to get to use more), letting less irrigation water be released from lakes such as UT lake, Decorating yards and corners on streets, ramps, etc with objects requiring no to little water instead of fountains, and of course stepping up yourself and educating yourself/changing your ways.
[signature]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000]Damnation FL, there’s hope for you yet. That was actually a good response for the most part. I’ll offer a couple of very minor critiques that I feel are constructive criticism in an effort to improve your analytical skills. I’m hoping you’ll see and understand that.[/#800000][/font]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000][/#800000][/font]
[size 3][quote FishingLunatic]What's to be embarrassed about? Complaining like I am which might spark a solution from others, or just sitting there saying nothing when you know there's a problem? [#ff0000]Do not depend on others to find solutions for you. Seek out your own solutions to life’s problems. You’ll be a much better person for it.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]Anyway, here's the 6 things I said we waste[/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]1-Sprinklers running while it's raining. What can we do? Turn them off of course! [#ff0000]Good answer, but way to simple. How do you get the end user (us) educated to the point that we know it’s in our best interests to turn them off?[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]Or we could make water usage more expensive, or (not sure if possible/how water travel totally works) have the government or whoever of water shut off our water...Kind of like how if you don't pay for electricity, heating, and utilities how they shut those off. [#ff0000]BS; there is way too much government control on society as it is right now. We damn sure don’t need more.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]2-Fountains serving as for decoration. What can we do? Decorate the area with rocks,stones, boulders, logs,twigs, etc. Or we could have higher prices on water. [#ff0000]As I’ve already mentioned – graduated rates that increase with increased usage. See there, we actually agree on something.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]3-Not wasting Canal Water. What can we do? Lower the water level of the canal. I'm sure there's some sort of dam system like with the Jordan River, so simply put:don't allow as much to get through the dam. Every year like I said, those canals get drained and there's about 2-3 feet of water that sits there once they stop letting the water run, and that gradually drains into the ground. [#ff0000]No easy answer here. Canals were made to get water to food plants and are still used primarily for that purpose. If you shut them down we don’t eat. But cutting back on delivery to non-food plants may be worth looking at.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]4-Not overwatering /sprinklering our gardens. What can we do? Educate ourselves on just how much water is really needed to care care of the yard. Increase prices to use over a certain ammount of water. Or simply have a limit of how much water each house hold can use(Don't make it a money thing, make it so everyone has x-amount of gallons of water they can use and once its used, turn off their supply of irrigation water. [#ff0000]Why not make it a money thing; people understand money and hitting their pocketbooks gets their attention immediately. One size fits all (everybody getting the same number of gallons) will not work for the simple reason that no two users have exactly the same water requirements.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]5-Making our hygene water efficient. What can we do? Educate ourselves and change our ways! Remember to turn off the water when we're brushing our teeth or doing our hair. Then, don't fill up your bathtub brim high or take a quick shower instead. Then of course there's the higher pricing or water restriction plans. [#ff0000]All good points.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]6-Reducing the amount of fires we cause. What can we do? Make fireworks, smoking, and other potential fire starters to be illegal in anywhere there's a high risk. In your own home, keep flammable objects away from things that can catch fire! [#ff0000]Most of those ideas have been around since I was a kid and I’m 71 years young. Still good points today but not outside the box thinking.[/#ff0000][/size]
[size 3][/size]
[size 3]So the options are pretty much increases prices, have a flat amount of water that each household can use use(and can't pay more to get to use more), letting less irrigation water be released from lakes such as UT lake, Decorating yards and corners on streets, ramps, etc with objects requiring no to little water instead of fountains, and of course stepping up yourself and educating yourself/changing your ways. [#ff0000]Good points and valid. And a much better approach than just complaining about water waste. Complainers are just an irritating part of the problem. Start being more proactive by offering ideas to fix the problems and become part of the solutions.[/#ff0000][/quote][/size]
[size 3][/size][font "Calibri"][size 3][font "Calibri"][size 3][/size][/font][/size][/font]
[signature]
Looks like a simple good search answers but what your your forgetting is Business and Industry. All your answer are geared to the individual or home owner. This is why I say we could save all the water and still be in a drought.
Did you know Utah is obligate to send a certain amount of water down stream ?
Other states have co-ops with Utah that they pay millions for. This in my personal opinion is a racket but Utility companies use the excuse it keeps the cost of your bill competitive.
You complain about fountains when there Water parks that use over a million gallons of water each summer they been around for quite some time and yet we gone through several years without a drought. SO explain how a fountain on your corner street is causing a drought ?
Do you know how much water is involved in mining or fracking ? As your already familiar with the Bingham copper mine do you even know how much water is used there... millions upons millions of gallons. Water is used to separate valuable minerals from dirt.
Do know how much water is used in refining oil ?
Did you know the NSA Data center in Bluffdale is estimated to use 1.7 million gallons of water per day to cool its computer systems ?
Allot your answers are flawed or just plain generalizations yes your correct that we as individuals could save more water but in reality is not the average joe who using the water its industry.
[signature]