The Palisadian-Post has partnered with locally founded environmental nonprofit Resilient Palisades to deliver a weekly “green tip” to our readers. This week’s tip was written by Bart Lynn.
It’s official. Last month, the Metropolitan Water District—the regional water wholesaler that decides how much water LADWP receives—declared a drought emergency for Southern California.
What, you may ask, can I as a homeowner do to help? Many things, actually, but here is a simple one for starters.
Nearly all homeowners have a gardener for their home or complex. Unfortunately, virtually every gardener uses a hose to clean the driveway and/or sidewalk in front of the place where they have just cut the lawn. For every 10 minutes they use the hose at full blast, they will use an average of 40 gallons of water. If it is a large home or condo/apartment complex, it could be double or triple that amount.
Speak to your gardener, head of the HOA or apartment owner, and inform them that their hard work of making your property look great is appreciated, but you don’t want them to use a hose to wash away the grass clippings and leaves. Ask them to use a broom (remember those?) and/or a blower (an electric one, since gas blowers are illegal and are very polluting) to tidy up.
As there are 9,600 homes/condo complexes in the Palisades, collectively we could be wasting 384,000 gallons of water per week, or over 1.5 million gallons per month. If the drought continues, we’re going to need millions of gallons “in the bank” to use for showers.
If we all take simple steps like this, we can help save water, make a positive impact and perhaps demonstrate that there are common sense solutions to problems we will continue to face for many years to come. That’s something our town could be really proud of.
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