With clear skies from early April, rain or snow can no longer be trusted to fall from the sky and flow down the mountains to fill lakes and streams.
This is not an exaggeration. According to the eyes in the sky at NASA, the world’s aquifers are dropping and global drought will soon arrive.
In fact, the way things are going water is more likely to be shipped in bottles than it is in clouds these days. All this makes keeping a green lawn perhaps a little short-sighted.
Saving water should be as automatic as recycling yet even with the extremely light water restrictions within the City of Powell River, many still find it impossible to curb their watering.
In the regional district, people on a water system have already been asked to be careful not to waste water. With well water levels getting low, attention turns to practice at the tap. With many homeowners growing a backyard full of food a drip watering system gets water to the roots, exactly where it is needed, without a drop wasted.
Tla’amin (Sliammon) First Nation leadership is doing the right thing by imposing extreme water restrictions that mean no watering lawns or gardens and no filling swimming pools.
Such actions show true community spirit in getting everyone pulling together to conserve water and to help neighbours struggling to access this most necessary resource.
And while green lawns may make some see red, social change is about exerting subtle pressures to extort compliance.
The solution is simple. Neighbours need to talk to neighbours and spread the message that, in this current time of water restrictions, having a green lawn is not okay.
Recycling only became widespread because of social pressures exacted by networks of children, co-workers and neighbours acting in near-unison to push the reluctant into blue-bin compliance.
This is the power of working together.
The City of Vancouver encourages residents to inform on neighbours ignoring water restrictions. Powell River can do one better if residents here choose to re-educate those keeping green lawns.
Powell River residents can follow Tla’amin’s good example by acting together to save water and treat it as the precious resource it truly is.
