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Only a Revolution in Our Thinking Can Save Us From a Water Crisis
http://www.alternet.org/water/only-revolution-our-thinking-can-save-us-water-crisis
We like to flush our toilets. A lot. Our flush figure for the U.S. is at 5.7 billion gallons a day in our homes alone. It's one of the great examples of American excess -- people across the world don't have enough clean drinking water, and yet we're happy to send it down the drain.
Of course, the last laugh may be on us. As we head into the fall nearly half of U.S. states are experiencing extreme or exceptional drought . Lack of rainfall is the easy culprit, but the truth is we don't manage our water resources well enough to deal with times of shortage. Just ask Atlanta, which went nearly bone-dry in 2007 or Las Vegas, which is working on an engineering a pricy $15 billion water pipeline to supplement its dwindling stocks. We can't blame it all on our flushing frenzy though; power plants and agriculture suck up the vast majority of our water. Not to mention the fact that industry often gets a free pass to pollute, our city managers fail to account for water when green-lighting new development, and we turn the other way when asked to consider the impacts of climate change.
"America needs nothing less than a revolution in how we use water," writes water journalist and author Cynthia Barnett in her book Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis (Beacon Press). The book, which was just released in paperback, calls for not just a green movement but a blue one, in order to recognize the critical importance of water in our lives and how threatened freshwater reserves have become -- whether in our lakes, rivers, aquifers or reservoirs. Barnett takes a critical eye to the U.S. in how we use water, but also takes readers on a worldwide journey so we can learn from countries like the Netherlands, Singapore and Australia.
While highlighting the crises we face, the ultimate goal of the book is transformation. The "revolution in how we use water" is no understatement, but it can be accomplished. Barnett gives concrete examples to help get us there, but the change we need is massive and it begins, she says, with the need for an American water ethic, reminiscent of Aldo Leopold's famous land ethic.
12 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I would put a greywater holding tank in, where water from the sinks, the washing machine, and the shower (and if I was building a house, the dishwasher 
) was used for landscaping and flushing the toilet. I've even seen simple setups where water from the bathroom sink is diverted into the toilet tank, and that seems like a smart idea.
I don't feel so bad about wasting water here because it all comes out of the river and (less evaporation) goes right back into the river, but the energy used to run the wastewater treatment plant and all the pumps is still wasted.
but my plants would probably be happier.
I've got a xeriscape going, which is a fancy word for "low-water, Darwinian selection test plot." 
