The Rain on My Car is a Baptism

One thing I noticed after moving to North Carolina is that it’s hot. (See, a Virginia Tech education DOES pay off in the real world.) This summer, I’ve been told, it has been unseasonably hot, and along with that there has been a severe lack of rain. We’ve been in the middle of a drought in NC, some parts worse than others. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, where we live in the Triangle is in the middle of a Severe Drought. Parts of Western NC are in the higher categories of “Extreme” and “Exceptional”, so I guess it could be worse. Even so, it’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually been watering our lawn. This is the first time that I’ve EVER watered a lawn, and I hope it doesn’t turn into a regular occurrence. I’m pretty conservative when it comes to water usage, and I probably wouldn’t be watering it now if it wasn’t for the warning of my neighbor right after we moved in. We introduced ourselves across the back fence, made some chit chat, and the conversation came around to lawns. I said I couldn’t believe how brown and brittle the grass was, and he replied that when he moved in last summer he never watered his lawn. It got so burned out that he had practically no grass left this spring and had to “start from scratch”. Not wanting the yard to turn into a barren wasteland with nothing but dust blowing around, I figured an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure, and started watering twice a week. It’s probably a good thing I did, as even with my limited watering the lawn got pretty brown in places, and I have huge patches of dirt as well. But most of it is in okay shape, and hopefully I won’t have to keep doing it.

Durham County, where I live, hasn’t instituted any mandatory watering measures that our neighbors in Wake County have had all summer (like only watering on certain days of the week, etc.) But recently they have entered into Stage II: Voluntary Conservation Practices due to the low water levels. Being the good citizen that I am, I definitely wanted to follow along. First, I wanted to know what Stage I was. Their recommendations for Stage I Water Conservation are (with my comments):

• Encourages residents to check fixtures for leaks and keep them in good repair. This makes sense, though it’s something you’d want to do anyway since we are billed for our water usage. Just one leaky faucet in a house that drips every 6 seconds wastes 462 gallons of water per year. So this is sound advice all the time.
• Store water to drink in the refrigerator instead of letting the tap run. It reminds of an old Far Side cartoon, when two guys who have obviously been lost in the desert for a long time come upon a water fountain, and one guy says, “Let’s let it run for a few seconds to get it cold.” This is a pretty good rule-of-thumb.
• Take four minute showers instead of baths. Or shorter, as Senor Love Daddy says in “Do the Right Thing”: “Keep those showers to a minute; 2 minutes if you’re showering with a friend.”
• Turn off the tap while shaving or brushing teeth. Okay, this I’ve never understood. Why would ANYONE ever leave their tap running while brushing teeth or shaving? Is it simply laziness? While the toothbrush is in your mouth, moving back and forth, what need is there to have the tap running? When you’re done brushing, start the tap, fill up your cup, and rinse. That’s it. Same with shaving – plug the sink with a minimum amount of water, and use that to rinse your razor. I can’t imagine how much water is wasted by leaving the tap going while shaving.
• Residents are also encouraged to wash only full loads in clothes washers and dishwashers.
  Okay, this is another pet peeve of mine. I once worked with a guy who said his wife does about 12 loads of laundry a week. TWELVE! Now he did have 2 kids, but I still cant’ figure out how or why anyone would need to do that much wash. In our house we do about 2-3 a week, depending if we’re washing sheets and towels or not. (And anyone who doesn’t re-use a towel from their shower for an entire week needs to get off their high horse. Hang it up, let it dry, and use it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.) I don’t get TWELVE a week. Are they washing the clothes they wear every day? Can’t you simply wait until the end of the week and wash them all at once? There must be reasons, but I don’t see them.

Okay, so I’ve already determined that Stage I practices are nothing more than common sense; things everyone should be doing already. So what are the Stage II practices? Here they are:

• Limit the use of clothes washer and dishwashers and only wash full loads. I think I’ve made my opinions on this pretty clear.
• Reduce toilet flushing to the minimum, whenever practical. I think this is a polite way of saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” This is a sensitive subject for a lot of people, and probably one that Sage doesn’t think appropriate to discuss in this forum. I’ll just say that in the privacy of one’s own home, when they don’t have guests over, flushing every time the commode is used does seem a bit wasteful.
• Water the lawn only when grass shows signs of withering; water late in the day after 6 p.m. if possible. As I mentioned earlier, I only started watering once the lawn was on the verge of looking like Canyonlands in the summer. And I never watered before 2 hours before sunset. I’ve seen some folks with their sprinklers on in the middle of the afternoon when it’s 98 degrees out. I’m not sure any of that water reached the ground before it evaporated.
• Limit watering of shrubs to a minimum and reuse household water when possible. The only watering outside the lawn I’ve been doing is our herb and flower garden, which is about 1 watering can’s worth every 2 days. As for reusing household water, we’ve taken a big step in that by purchasing our first rain barrel. I just set it up over the long Labor Day weekend, so of course it probably won’t rain for a month now.
• Limit car washing at home. I’ve never been a big washing-of-the-car person. I’ll do it at home once in a while, and if I’ve driven through a ton of dirt or dust that’s accumulated on the car, I might get a quick wash at the gas station. Personally I don’t really care what my car looks like too much. It’s not an investment, it’s simply a way for me to get from Point A to Point B. As long as the engine runs for a long time, a dirty car isn’t going to bother me.
• Limit washing down sidewalks, driveways, patios, and other hard surfaces
  Again, this is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves. When working in downtown DC almost every morning I’d see people with a hose hosing down the sidewalks in front of their businesses. First, this is just extremely lazy – pick up a broom and sweep it up! Second, they would always be washing their trash right down the sewer drain! How about sweeping up those cigarette butts and throwing them away instead?
• Limit the hours of operation of water-cooled air conditioners. I don’t even know what this means…there are A/C units that are water cooled? Not even sure if I have one or not, but I assume not.
• Use biodegradable, disposable dishes and utensils where feasible. Oh. My. God. This last one is enough to push me over the edge. How could the City of Durham POSSIBLY think this is a good idea? Disposable dishes and utensils are NOT any friends of the environments, and while this would save water, isn’t this MUCH worse for the environment in the long run? Just cut down on running the dishwasher until it’s full, but don’t kill more trees so someone can use a paper plate for 10 minutes and then throw it away!

So that’s Stage II, and I thought it quite amazing that, again, these are not EVERY DAY practices for most people. We’re not talking about huge, life-changing steps here; these are simple deeds that will have an almost ZERO impact on your daily lives, but could save millions and millions of gallons of water if everyone followed suit.

Some of the requirements of Stage III include allowing residents to only water lawns during certain days and hours and prohibits using water to wash down outside areas such as sidewalks, patios and driveways. So I guess if we do get to that point, I still won’t have to change my habits.