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| Good mudslide |
Do we save a drop thereof? No. We give all that water the bum's rush into the ocean, then subject ourselves to excessive DWP rates and dead lawns to discourage consumption of water.
So how about we use some simple, reliable technology that's been around since before the 13th century? On our most recent trip to beautiful Perpignan, France -- home of Mrs. Moore's fabulous MakeYourOwnDamnBreakfast.com vacation apartments -- I visited the Palace of the Kings of Majorca, which later became a massive citadel. You know how they stored water back in the day? Cisterns.
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Why not do the same thing here and now? Why not collect, along with all that free solar energy from the sky, some free water, too? Perhaps we can have rooftop units, though those can't be too big or they will topple buildings.
We already have this massive, paved, L.A. river, which sometimes actually behaves like a river, with actual water running through it. How much civil engineering would it take to build some diversionary damns to shunt a few lakes' worth of this rainwater into giant tanks and/or reservoirs? We already have water treatment facilities, right?
We need some outside-the-box thinking at the DWP about how to get some of this FREE, heaven-sent rainwater inside some boxes. Cisterns, baby, cisterns.
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| Palace of the Kings of Majorca, in Perpignan, France. Way cool. |
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| The Catalan Empire back in the day... |
There's already been some effort to curtail the use of "free" collected water. There have been a few court cases, although none in California that I'm aware of, where it was argued that water, even runoff water, was still someone's property. Either that of the holder of the water rights, or the water districts, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere was a website that dealt exclusively with that, but I can't locate it at present. I think it was centered around Oregon, Washington, and Idaho at the time
Have you forgotten all of the "spreading grounds" located throughout the San Fernando and the San Gabriel valleys. They are there precisely to collect excess water and to minimize dangers of flooding. The spreading grounds filter the water as it soaks down to become ground water which then is retrieved by various water companies throughout the County via water wells.
ReplyDeleteThe use of dams to collect water has been ruled out by the conservationists as too destructive to the environment - remember Hetch Hetchie, where an entire valley was submerged in order to collect run-off water to provide an uniterruptable supply of water for the citizens of San Francisco? Where would you suggest this runoff water be collected/stored - the Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, and the Staples Center come to mind.
Here you go:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.harvesth2o.com/statues_regulations.shtml#or
Or simply build a desalination plant on top of a newly designed Breakwater. It could even be powered by solar, wind or ocean waves. It can even be made accessible to folks for fishing.
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I Think Walter is referring to smaller, more individualized collection systems, so as to get people off the grid and start using that water that falls right on their immediate property. It's an old process, and still in use in some states. They collect it from their downspouts and funnel it right into a storage tank. There's one, less than immediately obvious side effect, and that is that the county will still want to come in and inspect them for safety like they do swimming pools, thereby still charging an increasingly higher fee over the years...or months if the mayor needs to send more money to his real constituents from south of the US border.
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