Wednesday, February 06, 2008

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!

6 comments:

Sid said...

So that's how the terrorist will win? Not thru weapons of mass destruction?

Courtney said...

$300 water bill? What are those people doing, running the shower all day every day? Jeez.

Mickey said...

Sing it, brother.

In Vegas, they've been paying homeowners to dig up their grass and put in gravel and desert plants instead. I hate to see a green, manicured lawn in these times of drought. Selfish pricks (I hope my dad isn't reading this.)

Let it all go back to pasture!

Meaghan said...

You really are going to think I watch a lot of TV, but have you ever seen the Family Guy where Osama is making one of those videos and one of his guys keeps making him laugh. It's pretty funny! See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZswUr_Bg9cU

Chris said...

Good points about the lawn. I'm not a fan of watering.

It makes me a little sad to see my lawn brown and crusty during the summer, but it did not make me sad to only have to mow the grass three times last year.

We have discussed hooking up some rain barrels to our gutters, however. In that case, we could at least water our flower beds guilt free. (Also, it would give the water somewhere else to go, besides slowly washing away our foundation.)

Julie said...

During the worst of it, I put a bucket in the shower to catch extra water. I normally did pretty good with this, especially considering it takes 3 minutes of running water to get the temperature to be bearably warm.

I haven't needed to use the bucket in over a month, though. I think it makes Matt sad becuase he no longer gets to say, "I live in a giant bucket."