The Paper Plate Conundrum

It's been all over the local news this week that the town of Cambria -- a seaside village nestled next to one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in the world -- is going to run out of water sometime next month. Their well water has dropped to historically low levels during our drought, and they are getting down to the dregs of their little aquifer as we speak.

About two hours east of Cambria, in the Sierra Foothills, the town of Porterville is also at least partly dry.  Approximately 20 percent of the households in the town of 55,000 now lacks running water, due to declining water levels underground and, again, dry wells.

So far here at the homestead, we are OK on water, our taps still flow and we're still able to irrigate our crops and water our livestock.  But the neighbors across the street have had their well run dry, and are having to truck water in. How much longer can our good fortune last?  I don't know.

 But I've started to wonder if we should, like our Cambrian neighbors to the west of us, begin to take more drastic measures to cut down on water usage.

You see, since this water crisis, everyone in Cambria has switched to using paper plates and plastic utensils for dining.  But eating off paper plates is an environmental conundrum. On the one hand, there is no question that by the Cambria locals doing this in their homes, they are saving a precious local resource, which is water.  On the other hand, it takes energy (including water, but not local water) to manufacture anything like a paper plate, it takes gasoline and oil to ship a package of paper plates to the store, and it takes even more gasoline and oil to have the trash man come and pick up all those paper plates every Wednesday, once they're used and discarded, and ship it all to the dump.  Plus of course, it will take several years to break down in a landfill.

I used to hate paper plates and what they represented, until a last summer, when we were forced to use them for a couple of months whilst remodeling our kitchen. We broke them out once we had no running water in the kitchen and used them instead of regular dishes when we dined in.  

I hated it and felt very guilty, but when the electricity bill came in, I was shocked. It turned out we used a lot less electricity when we did not run our dishwasher, and used less propane when we were not using as much hot water to wash dishes in. Which meant conservation, but at the cost described above. We saved gasoline, oil and other western resources in using less electricity, but, then again, more of those same resources from probably other regions by using paper plates.

I think as climate change progresses, you are going to see similar conundrums, where people have to choose between what works locally for them and what we've traditionally seen as conservation strategies. Paper plates are probably the bane of the tree-saving crowd, but the messiah of the water-saving crowd. Growing local food to eat is great until local water becomes scarce, and then buying produce from the market actually saves your own water for other lifesaving purposes, like drinking.  

It's a very sad tale of hard choices, and if this drought persists here in the west and climate change alters living habits elsewhere, there may be a lot more of them to come.

Conservation

California bears the dubious distinction of being one of those states where water conservation is not so much an option as a lifestyle, due to the fickle nature of the Mediterranean climate we live in, coupled with the weather pattern shifts Climate Change is bringing to the western states (well, every place, really).  

Yet, with each new drought and subsequent request that people conserve more, the question is inevitably asked:  How much more can we do?

California endured nasty droughts since before there was even a place called California, and most people do the right thing and use water wisely.  They are now being asked to reduce an additional 20 percent of water usage, which can be difficult if you kept up with the conservation measures you started doing in the late 1980's, during the last great drought.

That's the position we are in here at the Hot Flash Homestead.  We don't always flush (TMI?), we rarely wash our cars, and we've taken out almost all of our lawn.  So the 20 percent has to come from somewhere, and we've decided it's going to be here:

Yes, I think there's still room to save water in the bath and shower.  Starting now, we will be recycling the bathtub water, using a siphon and tubing, out to what's left of our lawn.  This way we can drastically cut down on the water we're using to water.  Grey Water is safe to use on lawn, shrubs and trees -- just not on vegetables.  Even more so since I make all our soap from gentle, natural ingredients, easily biodegradable, without any harsh chemicals. 


We are also looking at water collection barrels, which would allow our roof's rain runoff to be stored for drier months.

I'm not sure if it will get us to a 20 percent reduction in use since we already conserve so much, but it will help.

Of course the biggest and best changes would come if everyone in the state removed most of their lawns, if golf courses shut down or changed over to AstroTurf, and if swimming pools, agricultural ponding basins or reservoirs were covered to prevent evaporation.  But at this point, I guess that's asking too much of people.  So for now, we all do a little, and hope it helps a lot.

But, I suppose every drop in the bucket helps. And so we adjust our usage downward ... one more time.

Food Not Lawns

One of the first things we did when we moved here was to take out the water-sucking front lawn.  Out here in the country, running any water means using a precious (and dwindling) resource, and also running your well, which costs you money.  So you'd better love what you're watering, because you're paying for it. 

Since the huge front lawn not only wasn't giving us anything back in terms of food, but also requiring water PLUS going out when it's 90 degrees to mow and edge, we decided the big front lawn had to go. So we stopped watering it.

We are planting shrubs. These are not giant gopher holes.  

So here we are now, in January, with the lawn good and dead, and we have begun to fill in the former lawn space with some lovely, drought-tolerant plants, shrubs and trees.  We have lots of rosemary and lavender, and also some Torch Flowers, Gold Coin, Santolina (medicinal in addition to being a lovely landscape plant), ceanothus, a China Berry tree, and some other native stuff.  

We bought all these at the local nursery.

So we're at that same nursery this last weekend, buying vines and talking to the lady there about our neighborhood, which she's quite familiar with.  We're discussing the house that's kitty-corner from us, which was foreclosed on and where everything, trees included, died when the bank stopped watering.  Call it another casualty of the Great Recession.

But then the lady (who obviously doesn't know which house is ours) quips, "And what about the house across the street from the foreclosure?  Those people have totally killed their lawn!  I don't believe it!  Why would anyone do THAT?"

Ahem. Yes, I'm sure you guessed it.  We are "those people."

I relayed this to her and she pretty much died of embarrassment right on the spot.  But it does lead one to wonder:  Are people still so behind the curve they believe watering a half-acre of turf is somehow a wise thing to do, in an area where the water table is dropping?   

While it is hard to be considered "those people," conservationists have to be willing to stick to their guns and realize they may be out in the lead in terms of forward thinking, and that some people still haven't understood the reasons behind conservation of water and other resources, and the urgency of getting on with it. 

Like the old saying goes:  When you're two steps ahead of the crowd, they'll call you a crackpot.  When you're one step ahead of the crowd, they'll call you a genius.

Signed, 
The Neighborhood Crackpots.