Many of you are probably familiar with the massive rainfall that Southern California / Los Angeles is experiencing as I write this. Many more are familiar with the cyclical water shortages California has been experiencing for half a decade and that the vast majority of water used in Southern California is pumped there from Northern California and other states. This pumping of water translates into approximately 19% of California’s annual electricity budget for a state that prides itself on being / going “green”.
The funny thing is that Southern California’s water and our electricity usage problem is self inflicted to a certain extent. For example, the Los Angeles County building codes mandate that rainwater be moved from the roofs to the street where it goes into the storm drains and is then flushed down huge concrete canals straight into the Ocean.
The sad part of all this engineering, is that an inch of rain translates into approximately 7.5 billion gallons of water that is currently “flushed”. Instead of sending it to the Ocean, why not use giant cisterns to capture the rainfall and use it in Southern California, instead of paying to transport water 100’s of miles – (a portion of which evaporates on the way)! If you think of it, over half of current annual water requirements could be met with cisterns alone. Thought of it another way California could significantly reduce its electrical power plant air pollution by reducing water pumping 25 – 50%!!
The sad fact is that cisterns are not a new idea, they just weren’t planned into city development like they were with ancient civilizations (see the Roman empires awesome gravity fed canal systems). The current canal system was built when water and electricity were cheap and it has been “easier” to add more water and electricity to the problem, rather than rethink it.
My clean and green wish for the holidays is that Californians help our environment by telling our government to do something simple and economically viable. Building new aqueducts maybe necessary in the future but let’s do what is smart first, instead of how we usually handle problems by throwing more bond money at a problem that needs to be re-evaluated from the ground up!
Happy Holidays!!
David Brown's Blog 