Water, Water Everywhere

A cou­ple of week­ends ago, my room­mates and I had the plea­sure of a burst pipe in our base­ment. Of course, we ran around like chick­ens with our heads cut off try­ing to find some­body who knew where the water shut-off valve was.  But nobody seemed to know until one heroic neigh­bor stepped in.

We spent the rest of that Sat­ur­day clean­ing up 3–4 inches of frigid water after los­ing feel­ing in our toes in the first few minutes.

To cel­e­brate the con­clu­sion of our Her­culean feat, we sat down and shared snacks.  We’d saved water in bath tubs so that we could at least flush the toi­let man­u­ally. But, faced with only a gal­lon or two of bot­tled water, we really started to think about how we use water on a daily basis.  One roommate—who by the way is not in an envi­ron­men­tal field—commented that flush­ing using tub-water made her think about how much water our toi­lets really use.  And to add insult to injury, it is highly-treated, drink­able water.  Our own mini-water cri­sis forced us to expe­ri­ence the harsh real­i­ties of fresh water short­ages faced by a grow­ing per­cent­age of the world.

So the next time you brush, flush, or shower, think about how you could con­serve.  I know I will.

Check out these livegreenhoward.com pages for more infor­ma­tion on water con­ser­va­tionand Howard County’s drink­ing water.