Whither the indoor fountains of yesteryear?
The rich get richer and the poor get…drought.
Swimming pools, flower gardens, indoor fountains — and the urbanites who can afford them — are big factors behind the increasingly dire water crises plaguing cities, an international research team says.
Published in the journal Nature Sustainability, a new study found socioeconomic disparity to be just as influential as climate change and population growth when it comes to explaining why the water supply in so many cities is shrinking.
Rich people can afford to waste water; poor people can’t.
Even 25 years after South Africa’s apartheid ended, Cape Town is still segregated in distinct geographic lines, making it easier to track water usage among income groups, Savelli said. The city also experienced a major drought from 2015 to 2017, a crisis so severe that the city narrowly averted “Day Zero,” when it believed water sources would dry up entirely.
In the same time period, Cape Town’s elite households consumed roughly 571 gallons of water daily, compared with 47 gallons for households in lower income brackets, the researchers found.
Despite only representing about 14% of the population, the wealthiest residents used more than half of the water (51%) consumed by the entire city.
And most of the water used by those privileged social groups went for nonessential needs, such as irrigation, swimming pools and water fixtures. Other social groups used the most water for basic functions like drinking or bathing.
Well obviously. You’re not going to take 20 showers a day because you’re rich, or drink 100 gallons of water, or wash a billion dishes. You’re going to use water for non-basic stuff, because you can.
It’s hard to imagine solutions like fines and restrictions being immediately effective in places like the U.S.
Take for example Los Angeles, a city with an infamous lack of groundwater sources. In 2022, celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Kevin Hart and Sylvester Stallone were called out for blatantly flouting fines and “notices of exceedance” for their drought-era water usage.
“For the celebrities or musicians or athletes who all live in the area, monetary penalties are going to be meaningless to them because it doesn’t matter. They have plenty of money and if they want to, they could spend $5,000 a month on a water bill,” said Mike McNutt, a spokesman for the local water district.
After increasing frustration, the district took the infrastructure route after all, installing automatic flow restriction devices capable of turning lawns brown and reducing even Kardashian’s Instagram-famous sink faucet to a mere trickle.
From let them eat cake to let them swim in a smaller pool.
Putting a cover over a pool significantly reduces the amount of water lost to evaporation and should be mandatory in places like Los Angeles. I’m sure the Kardashians can afford one.
I think that desalination of sea water, as at the mining community of Las Salinas in Chile, is probably a large part of the answer here. A second reticulation network piping seawater to houses and apartments for solar desalinators mounted on rooftops would have the additional advantage of keeping those buildings cooler in summer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
Every bit counts, of course, but my understanding is that at least in California, agricultural usage of water dwarfs residential uses. And it’s not simply a matter of saying “well, people need food, so that’s ok” — some crops use a lot more water than others. Almonds I believe are a huge consumer of water.
I like that xeriscapes are becoming more popular — there is just no reason why people in Southern California should insist on having lush green lawns like it’s the Midwest or Ireland or something. You live in or near a desert, embrace it.
Desalination is *essential* to the survival of civilization… Which means the occupants of the Great American Desert are absolutely fucked.
Outdoor fountains are even worse than indoor; the evaporation rates are horrible, especially in hot areas, like Phoenix, which has to have a 90 foot water fountain.
If desalination is essential to the survival of civilization, then civilization needs to die off. Desalination is a huge problem for the ocean, and we’ve fucked up the ocean enough already. i know, people say, oh, no, it’s not enough! There’s no way!
Keep in mind that’s what we said about trash in the ocean – no way we can damage it. The same about the atmosphere – the little bit we put out there can’t hurt it! It’ll dissipate!
Yeah. Until we start putting so much out there that it can’t dissipate…can’t absorb…can’t recover.