Recently League City government has instituted a stage II of the drought contingency plan which requires that residents reduce their water consumption through a myriad of restrictions. However, I maintain that the recent drought is not the cause of these measures taken by League City to conserve water. League City has grown by 83% in population over the last decade. As the population soared, the amount of water that League City has access to have not kept pace with its growth. Bad management of our water resources has led to daily water usage that comes very close to exceeding our available contracted water supply. The normal demand for water created by the need for irrigation in spring and summer months has pushed League City’s water demand to the limit of our available supply with no relief in sight until demand for irrigation is gone. Without new contracted water supply agreements available to League City, the problem of not enough water will not go away. The key to this issue is the demand for irrigation can no longer be supplied to our residents with the current available water supply.
14 comments:
This is what happens when cities/countries are dependent upon third parties for their water/oil. If you don't have your own direct source, you are at the mercy of the city/country you purchase it from.
And be afraid - with the electronic meters the city is able to track peak usage times. Billing rates can be adjusted for peak usage - just like the gasoline rates at the pump are adjusted for the current trading rate on the market.
um, Jack Murphy! why is he still working here?
I was told by a person of "authority" that our big blue water pump station (the one that reads "League City" but is actually in Webster) is working full bore, at long last (and at no small cost either).
More than one resident wants (or wanted) to have their own well, which would reduce demand on the city's supply. But the city impudently informs them that they will immediately put a meter on it and "sell" these folks their own water. Presumably, the city will also "sell" them the right to GIVE it back to the city in the public sewer system too.
Money-grubbing b*st*rds.
So is any more water capacity to LC scheduled to be coming online soon? If so, when? If not, when do we get to permanent water rationing and/or a property development moratorium?
Is it a coincidence that the City has removed the mandatory water restrictions just as we have a tropical storm headed our way?
This is no surprise. The City is working on an additional supply down Beemer to the west side of town. Way too long in coming and far too small to do much good. Just like the Comprehensive Plan, the City can not finish planning then implement anything effectively. Hope we get a City Manager that knows how to manage a council and staff.
I'm troubled by the paradigms that characterize both the debates and the muni rulemakings on this issue. Specifically, there's a "naughty-public" overtone in many of the formal statements, an allusion to an underlying assumption that IF ONLY the public would just back off its greedy 'irrigation' habits, LC's water shortage problems would naturally abate.
In fact, I suspect that a significant fraction of the water is actually consumed not by irrigation but by slab watering, an activity which is NOT regulated, and NOT something that we the public, out of the goodness of our non-greedy hearts, can afford to quit doing during a severe drought. Similarly with the Drought Contingency Plan, there's an implicit assumption that, in an even-worse drought crisis, the City could simply ask the public to stop watering altogether, but I don't ever see anything remotely resembling that happening (would YOU volunteer to potentially sacrifice YOUR house foundation?!).
Anyway, I blogged about that last week, and GCDN coincidentally (?) followed up a few days later with a slab-watering guidance article, an important subject about which the entire local news media has thus far been suspiciously silent.
The bottom line is that LC needs more water. On that issue, there is no room for negotiation and nothing to be gained by brow-beating the greedy 'irrigating' public. It's not show-boat green lawns that many of us are pursuing with our hoses and sprinklers - it's the continued structural integrity of the single largest investments of our lives.
I agree that building foundation watering is a necessary activity. Are there any statistics available on what percent of water usage in LC/Houston is slab watering in summer? That said, I think that much lawn irrigation and slab watering (but not all) could be done with non-potable water. For example, the large retention pond in Brittany Lakes, which has high dollar homes all around it, is also used to irrigate greenspace.
I was telling a friend of mine that if I was hqaving a house built, I'd have the plumbing piped for gray water usage.
I suppose it would be foolish to try and get building laws and codes changed.
Just saw this in GDN http://galvestondailynews.com/story/248038
BHL - I *did* have a house built (in 2010) and you *can't* control your own greywater. Of all the envelope-pushing we did with respect to building code, that one was simply out of the question. We don't need to mess with greywater anyway, as your subsequent GCDN link suggests (and which I also blogged about this morning at http://centerpointeleaguecity.blogspot.com/2011/08/barrell-o-function.html)
http://seabreezenews.com/issue/Page_01c.pdf
Chuck, could you loan me some non potable water to irrigate my slab with?
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