"The enemy of an adequate water supply is St. Augustine grass"

COMMENTARY
Water wars will land squarely on home turf
Mike Thomas

The state of Georgia is stealing our water. Or we're stealing their water, depending on your point of view. This war between the states, pitting the water needs of Atlanta against the Apalachicola River, will be raging here soon enough.

Only it won't be us against Georgia. It will be us against us. Central Florida needs more sources of water because there isn't enough in the aquifer that we can keep sucking it out of the ground... We are not solving our water problem. We are transferring it from the aquifer to our rivers and lakes, all of which are shallow and particularly vulnerable to droughts.

The only way to solve the problem, stop the water wars and save our waterways, is to forget about increasing supply and instead drastically cut demand. The first step in doing that is obvious, with more than half our urban water going to lawns. "The enemy of an adequate water supply is St. Augustine grass," says Orange County Commissioner Bill Segal. Segal is working on a series of conservation measures along those lines. They include forbidding homeowner associations from mandating St. Augustine.

In fact, we should ban St. Augustine and sprinkler systems in new developments. We should encourage their elimination in existing neighborhoods by limiting irrigation to one hour a week. Water should be priced on a sliding scale that goes up sharply with usage, with severe cost penalties kicking in at 10,000 gallons. Water utilities should provide home water audits just like power utilities perform energy audits. Instead, they profit from the waste. Price it low and watch it flow. "We need to look at conservation first," says Segal. "It can be huge. We look at supply but don't want to change our habits." Look what is going on in Atlanta. That is our future.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/orl-miket0407nov04,0,5058463.column

when you consider most of the state is a water-infested swamp. And they can't find water? Are their corporations involved at some point in this?

And Florida is going nuts with it. Building huge developments where there is no water, unplanned uncontrolled growth.

I agree with you about the grass, though....

Lake Okeechobee is dry to low.

That's what we've done and it's great not to worry about cutting the grass. IMO it's immoral to grow, which means water, a lawn in an arid region, which seems to now include just about the whole country. Or at least the southern part of the country, don't know about the North.

We water ours very little and it fares better in dry weather than either bluegrass or bermuda. I have no idea where he gets this from.

relatively little money who rely on small home gardens for some of their food. Water is food for many people on our earth. The grass can go. Vegetable gardens should be the priority.

I have a home garden. Ten thousand gallons a month would inundate my yard and garden. Using soaker hoses, hand watering, raised beds, and lots of mulch greatly reduces watering needs.

Another way communities could save water is to permit diversion of washing machine water into yards and gardens. It's ridiculous to have laws actually forbidding the reuse of grey water, but lots of places do.

I used to have to wash out of stuff. Does the soap take care of all the e coli?

Maybe they need to take a lesson from Las Vegas...

What, like how to ban reuse of grey water and mandate that it be sent down the sewer? Like how to restrict water usage, except when it comes to lavish displays for the amusement of tourists? Like how to get really tough on small water users, and mindlessly approve every request for a new golf course that comes to Planning and Zoning?

growth, it has plans to steal the water out from under Great Basin National Park and the Snake Valley. Of course, there couldn't POSSIBLY be any adverse economic consequences for other people or environmental consequences from that, right????

i live in the desert and feel horrible using (on average)less than half that amount

OK, actually it is a different version. But my interpretation of these graphs remains that xeriscaping isn't going to mean fuck-all.

Wonder if the one for the UK would be similar?
:shrug: