“Water Hog” Label Haunts Dallas

By ANA CAMPOY, Wall Street Journal

DALLAS — A reputation as a wasteful “water hog” is complicating Dallas’s efforts to siphon water from nearby communities.

Local officials, who say they need to nearly double their water supply in coming decades to keep up with a fast-growing population, want to build new reservoirs and buy water from nearby Oklahoma. But these efforts are entangled in federal lawsuits as Dallas’s neighbors see the city’s love for emerald-green lawns and lush golf courses as rampant waste.

“It’s not that they need the water to survive,” said Michael Banks, an East Texas dentist who lives near a river Dallas wants to dam. “What they want is to destroy our wildlife so they’ll have enough water for their grass.”

City officials recognize they have an image problem. “We’ve been called water hogs,” said Ramon Miguez, Dallas assistant city manager. But he said the city has made significant efforts to conserve water in recent years, including educating residents not to drench their lawns.

Spats between communities that sip and those that gulp are becoming increasingly common in the South and the West. Sprawling cities packed with houses featuring big lawns and many bathrooms typically don’t use water very efficiently, experts and environmentalists say.

So when city officials scout for more water beyond their boundaries, they don’t get much sympathy from their neighbors.

“It’s an environmental equity issue,” said David Feldman, chairman of the Department of Planning, Policy and Design at University of California, Irvine. “Before they give up their water, they want to make sure that the city isn’t being wasteful.”

In recent years, cities such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas have been forced to conserve water aggressively to meet their needs and persuade other communities to let them tap their supplies.

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Source: The Wall Street Journal

Lance Armstrong targeted for his water waste

HOUSTON (NY Times)— Lance Armstrong is one of the favorite sons of Texas and a model citizen known as much for his social conscience as his cycling. So it came as a surprise when it was revealed this week that he is one of the biggest individual users of water in Austin, where he lives.

In July, Mr. Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, used a whopping 330,000 gallons of water at his lush Spanish-colonial home, with an acre of gardens and a swimming pool, city water authority officials said. The bill for July was $2,460.

This tremendous flow of H2O, which is 38 times what the average household in the city uses in the summer, comes as Texas is going through a dry spell and officials are asking people to cut back on watering their lawns. “We are definitely short on rain,” Lisa Rhodes, a spokeswoman for the authority, said with a sigh.

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Source: New York Times

For more information on water conservation, visit www.nuprana.com

Texas drought conditions prompt water conservation

AUSTIN- Water restrictions in Kyle limit irrigation to two days a week.

Environmental educator Jennee Galland hopes that by reaching out to the users they can prolong the time before the aquifer levels drop to critical drought stage. “Just an inch a week is all you really need if you’re going to water, or just let it go dormant,” she said. “And that way it will recover and it will get deeper roots and it will be able to withstand droughts better.”

Brian Smith is an hydrogeologist and he says we need several inches of rain to break this drought. In the meantime, aquifer levels continue to go down. “Day by day, we see the water levels dropping and the spring flow at Barton Springs is dropping due to lack of rain flow,” he said.

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Source: New 8 Austin

For more information on water conservation, visit www.nuprana.com