By Got water? California sure doesn’t, and this historic 4-year drought is only going to continue if Californian’s don’t severely limit their water consumption.
Impressively lush green lawns have now become irrelevant, and squeaky-clean sidewalks will have to get a little dirty.
We are in a drought unlike any we have ever seen before, so we need to take actions that we haven’t taken before. We are not getting the level of effort that this situation clearly warrants due an apparent level of ignorance among Californians.
With a heightened sense of alarm and publicity last year, Californian’s began to grasp the severity of the drought. People were starting to take steps to conserve water and pay closer attention to how much water they were using.
Even California State University, Long Beach began taking action in response to Governor Jerry Brown’s State of Emergency declaration due to the severe drought conditions.
CSULB has been implementing water conservation projects as part of the campus’ overall sustainability goals, including transitioning to drought tolerant landscaping, converting landscape areas to drip irrigation, use of waterless and low flow urinals, installing touch free automatic faucets with low flow restrictors, installing weather based central irrigation controllers and using reclaimed water for irrigation.
While, CSULB is still working on water conservation, it only took one wet December and a few massive storms to wash away the worry from students’ minds.
Just last week, Governor Brown ordered mandatory water use reductions for the first time in California’s history, saying the state’s 4-year drought had reached near crisis proportions after a winter of record low snowfalls. Perhaps this is the type of scare that students and individuals need in order to take this drought devastation seriously.
According to The New York Times, any effort to force reductions in water use could be politically controversial. “This will be somewhat of a burden — it’s going to be very difficult,” Brown said. “People will say, ‘What about the farmers?’ Farmers will say, ‘What about the people who water their lawns?’ ”
Far too many individuals pass the buck when it comes to taking responsibility to conserve water. They assume their neighbor is conserving enough by not watering their lawn or that someone else is taking the initiative to take shorter showers.
This type of ignorance and nonchalance will be the reason for an eight or 10-year drought if individuals don’t begin to realize the true magnitude of this situation, and take ownership and responsibility by making daily changes to conserve water.
According to a recent survey conducted by the State Water Resources Control Board, water conservation declined 14.1 percent from the months of December to January in Southern California alone. After a few days of heavy December rainfall people were quick to think that rivers and lakes were back to being full and that prayers for the drought had been answered. Much to their surprise – this was not the case.
Southern California, CSULB students included, need to realize the severity of this problem and do their part to conserve water for more than a semester.
Creating a competition between dorm buildings, and implementing an incentive for the residence hall that conserves the most water by the end of the semester could be a great way to generate participation among students to conserve water.
Residence of CSULB’s on and off-campus dorms need to significantly reduce their length of showers. Timing system showerheads will effectively monitor the length of showers in order to cut back excessive water usage.
It may seem like a no-brainer to take lengthy showers because for many students, utilities are included in rent, but the environment simply cannot afford it. Students also need to remember to turn off the faucet while brushing their teeth.
There is no excuse for people’s ignorance regarding the drought or its solutions, as any minor contribution to conserve can add up to make a big difference, Southern California and California at large can work together collectively to lessen the severity of this drought and continue to stay hopeful for wetter days.
