Silly Water Restrictions

There's been a big debate on the beer-atl mailing list the past couple of days about the outdoor water use restrictions and how that may affect homebrewing. After all, most homebrew setups are too large to be cleaned inside and require use of the outdoors to be cleaned after brewing. For me, this isn't really a problem. In addition to having a deep well as my water source and no neighbors who can spy on my using water in my yard, my part of the state is actually completely out of drought conditions. The pond in my backyard is entirely fed by ground water levels and it's completely full. The field to the side of my house has been a marsh since the fall. The only problem is that the rest of the state outside of the little semicircle extending inland from the coastal areas didn't get most of that rain that seemed to be nearly constant for us for the last few months.

During the discussion, one of the posters commented that many of his neighbors thought that $300 water bills were normal. Who are these people and what are they doing to use so much water? I've never been overly concerned about conserving water, but when I lived in Adairsville and actually had city water, the water bill was combined with the gas bill and together it was usually less than $100 a month except in the winter when the auxiliary heat burned up more gas than normal. In other words, our water usage never exceeded $100 and was probably closer to $50 a month. Now, I understand that Atlanta and metro county prices are probably a little steeper than they were in a small town like Adairsville, but seriously, where is the rest of that vast difference coming from?

I'm sure most of it came from watering the yard, which in my opinion is quite stupid. If you water the yard, the grass grows. If the grass grows, you have to cut it. If you have to cut it, you have to go out into the 90-degree weather and sweat through the task of mowing the yard. If you don't bother to water the yard, you not only save the cost of equipment for watering, you also don't have to worry about the grass growing as much. You spend less time mowing, which makes you a happier person. You also burn less gasoline in your inefficient mower, which means you donate less money to terrorism. Osama loves a perfectly manicured lawn. He said so in one of those video releases from some cave in Pakistan.

In other words, you waste water on your lawn vanity and you're helping the terrorists win. Make a jihadist cry and kill your yard today!