One of Our San Diego Neighbors Uses Almost 38,000 Gallons of Water a Day

Despite receiving normal rainfall in the last year or so, we here in southern California have been trying to do our part to save water in a state that is experiencing one of the worst droughts in our history. So it is disheartening to read about one of our neighbors in Rancho Santa Fe who is using 13.8 million gallons of water a year.

            That comes out to almost 38,000 gallons of water a day. Almost 38,000 gallons a day! As our local paper, the Union-Tribune illustrates, that is enough water to supply the water needs of 110 single-family homes. The paper is leaving the name of the owner of the property unpublished.

            I can hear the argument, “Well, he pays for that water, so what is wrong with that?”

What could possibly be wrong with one southern California homeowner using almost 38,000 gallons of water a day?

The problem is that everybody else is paying for that water as well. We San Diegans are facing water rate increases, as much as 17 percent. Part of that increase would go to pay for the new water desalination plant in Carlsbad and the indirect potable reuse program, a plant and a program that would be unnecessary were it not for some folks using an enormous amount of water.

            The price paid by everybody else doesn’t stop there. We use pumps to bring water here from the Colorado River and the Sacramento River Delta, which uses energy. It is estimated that 20 percent of the energy used in California is to move water from one place to another. It also takes energy to desalinate water. That energy use translates into climate change.

            Maybe I shouldn’t grouse so much. The good news is that our neighbor has reduced his consumption of water down from last year’s 31.7 million gallons. I guess I should be thankful for that.

            How about you? What do you think when you read a story like this? Does it discourage you from conserving? Do you think there should be an upper limit on how much water one person or household can consume?

California's Own Climate Change Feedback Loop

We don’t often talk about the feedback loops that make a warming world even warmer. But as the thermostat on the planet goes up and up, there will be more and more of them. Feedback is when an effect of an input further amplifies the effects of that input. One feedback loop that is sometimes cited in climate change is snowfall. A warmer climate leads to less snow falling on the Earth and the snow that does fall melts more readily in the warmer climate. With less snow on the ground, which reflects sunlight back out into space, the planet warms a bit more than it otherwise would. So the world gets even warmer, which means even less snow, which means further warming, less snow and further warming.

            See where this is going.

Jimi Hendryx: feedback you want

Here in California we are providing an additional feedback loop to our globe warming. In our case, climate change has been a factor in the drought that we are enduring here. The warmer atmosphere means that things evaporate more quickly, so what might have been a fairly normal downturn in the precipitation we receive has turned into a years-long and extremely severe drought.

California's drought: feedback you don't want

Less water in our rivers and streams means that there is less water flowing behind the dams that generate hydroelectric power. So our hydroelectric power stations cannot generate as much electricity as they used to, which means that our electric lights, televisions, and computers are powered by other sources. While much of this power gap is made up by renewable sources, some of that electricity is generated by burning natural gas, which puts carbon into the atmosphere. Less water = less hydroelectric power = more natural gas burned = more CO2 in the air = global warming = less water = less hydroelectric power... OK, you see where this is going.

During Our Drought, Rancho Santa Fe Uses Water Like There's No Tomorrow

First off, apologies for the dearth of blogs from Environment in Context. Weekly, sometimes almost daily blog posts became infrequent, then nonexistent. Sorry. I imagine that I could give a number of excuses. What it boils down to mostly, if you ask anyone who blogs, is that blogging takes up way more time than what it might seem, and I just was feeling that I did not have enough time to write up good blogs. Sorry about the hiatus. I’ll try my best to send out at least a couple blogs a week. Now on to some serious blogging.

            Using data from 400 urban water agencies, State Water Resources Control Board issued a report on per capita water use for us folks here in California, as well as a conservation report. Both of these reports are requirements of the Emergency Water Conservation Regulation. The emergency regulation was adopted by the State Water Board in response to the severe drought that we are enduring here throughout the entire state.

            What emerges from the data on per capita water use is the incredible disparity in the amount of water that Californian’s use. At the lower end of per capita use are areas like East Los Angeles, where folks get by on about 48 gallons a day. This past May the municipality of Santa Cruz called for a 25 percent reduction in water use—or a limit of 60 gallons of water per person, per day. Santa Cruzans have been exceeding the limit, with each person using only 44.9 gallons per day.

            At the other extreme are the folks who live in the northern reaches of San Diego County, the Santa Fe Irrigation District, where folks use up 584.35 gallons of water a day, more than ten times the amount used by East Los Angelinos, Santa Cruzans, as well as the water use of people who live in Daly City, Palo Alto, Hayward, and a few other municipalities.

            Now it’s not that folks in East Los Angeles or Daly City don’t bath less frequently or that they aren’t as thirsty as other folks. Those differences are almost entirely from the differences in how much individuals water their landscaping. And the State Water Resources Control Board on its website where the data of this report can be found let us know that the use of water for landscaping will vary a lot because of things like climate and population density. People who live in places that are hot and dry will use more water for landscaping than people who live where it is cooler and rains more. High-density communities, where residents live in apartments or where real estate lot sizes are small, will use less water per person than where there are large estates. Water rates are a factor as well.

            But 584.35 gallons a day? That’s, well, a lot of water! Multiplying that out by the number of residents in the district, 19,386, that comes out to well over eleven million gallons of water a day. That’s enough to fill 17 Olympic swimming pools every day. These are folks who don’t live in a Palm Springs desert. Though dry, the climate of San Diego is mild. These folks just have large lots that they water a lot! Compare the bird’s eye view of Daly City and that of Rancho Santa Fe.

 

Daly City

Rancho Santa Fe, where they use lots and lots of water 

The houses in Daly City are tightly situated on streets, while the estates of Rancho Santa Fe sprawl over the landscape. And note how green those estates are. The Santa Fe Irrigation district also includes Solana Beach, a beach community of middle class houses and apartments. These residents, with their more modest water use, bring down the average of the Santa Fe Irrigation District. There must be some residents of Rancho Santa Fe who use A LOT more than 580 gallons a day.

            While this just seems so obviously wrong to me, the way this has been covered in the press also intrigues me. The story in the Los Angeles Times is pretty straightforward, giving readers the notable extremes of use, the factors involved in that water use, and overall water use trends. Two days ago, our local paper, the San Diego UT, had this to say about the disparity of usage, “The statistics ranged from a low of 85 gallons for the San Francisco Bay area to a high of 252 gallons for the Colorado River region.” This gives the reader the impression that the highest use was that of 252 gallons a day in the eastern part of our county. The article mentions that per capita use in parts of the county, Carlsbad and Olivenhain, ranged from 185 to 305 gallons a day, which is confusing when the reader has just read that the highest use was 252 gallons a day.  And nowhere in the article did it say that the folks here in Rancho Santa Fe district used about twice that amount of water.

            Now, two days later, the UT comes out with the rest of the story and the prodigal water use going on in our north county. I don’t know why it took them a couple extra days to get around to mentioning this. It’s important information. But having the two different articles could be confusing,  and before we go spending millions of dollars on projects to recycle water or on desalination plants, we need to know all the facts.

Nothing against the folks who live in Rancho Santa Fe, but perhaps the most affordable and easiest solution to our present problems presented to us by this long-standing drought is simply using water more equitably.