Water hogs: Central Florida's celebrities, average Joes waste s...

Tired of it All wrote:

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"Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill" I think with a matured brain, marinaded in decades of life's experiences rather than parroting what some left wing college instructor at Berkley spouted off on the way to the next demonstration.
While you were probably taking exciting courses in "Wild flowers of the Argentine Pampas" I was in VoTech school learning radio communications which let me jump into my first job right out of school. Not too many jobs painting wild flowers is there?

Radio Communications? RUSH? Is that you? I thought the OxyContin kept you in bed all day Sunday. Good to see you here.

I agree that some of those numbers reflect excessive water use, but in looking to conserve water, I think we all must consider HOW MANY people reside in a given residence and divide water usuage in a reaasonable fashion. I have a large family (often there are eight of us in residence...5 of them are home 24/7) ... so they are not flushing or using water at an outside source...(work, school,etc) Not making excuse for Tiger or any of the others... but making restrictions based on residential usage should take into consider the number of persons in a household. I don't like paying more per thousand than my neighbor... who lives alone and here I have eight people using less water PER PERSON than he does. Just a thought.

hello!!!, o.u.c as i recall there was an article no more than 3-years ago that you couldnt account for 1000's of gallons a day.

Bruce Tavares wrote:

Typical liberal tactics. 1. Class envy(those evil rich!) 2. Demonize them(water hogs)
Having said that, many of those ideas for saving water are good and I am forced to use them because the city of Tavares gouges us unmercifully for water and even worse for sewer, which is linked to water usage.
But the water problems can, and probably will be fixed with desalination plants integral with nuke electrical generation plants at some time in the future. If the tree huggers will allow more nukes.

Bruce, I don't think you can attribute that to 'liberals'. Here in Florida, water issues are critical to our quality of life here. What bothers me about the article is it fails to mention the commercial usage of Disney and Universal, golf courses (I live on one and they use lots of water), etc. I know Disney and Universal have resources to set a xeriscape example, and wonder why they don't. I know part of the experience of those theme parks is the beautiful surroundings, perhaps it is the taxes they pay, that no one seems to address their usage in the article? At any rate, the private consumer should simply be charged at an incredible rate after taking into consideration how many bedrooms and bathrooms there are in the house, and what an average homeowner uses on their lots. Any usage above that amount should cost more per gallon. If they can pay for it and the money goes to conservation programs or developing research to desalinate ocean water, what the heck? That method should take care of your "liberal" attack view, it is fair.

mom2-4kids wrote:

I agree that some of those numbers reflect excessive water use, but in looking to conserve water, I think we all must consider HOW MANY people reside in a given residence and divide water usuage in a reaasonable fashion. I have a large family (often there are eight of us in residence...5 of them are home 24/7)... so they are not flushing or using water at an outside source...(work, school,etc) Not making excuse for Tiger or any of the others... but making restrictions based on residential usage should take into consider the number of persons in a household. I don't like paying more per thousand than my neighbor... who lives alone and here I have eight people using less water PER PERSON than he does. Just a thought.

Now you threw a wrench in my idea that water usage rates should be applied to the number of bedrooms in a house and lot size! I didn't think about the number of people in the house SHARING bedrooms. Maybe if you could prove you had a large family, it could still work?

Chris wrote:

<quoted text>True. Tiger could also install cisterns and a gray water tank and use that water. The amount of water he uses should be so expensive that that becomes economical. In fact it probably already is but until he is shamed he probably won't do it.

On a trip to Bermuda once, I was so excited about the collection of water in cisterns (they collect the rain water off the roof and it goes into underground cisterns for home use). That was until someone there told me their rain water is so clean, they can use it with very little chemical cleaning. Is OUR water that clean? It would be for the yard, but collecting it and building cisterns underground would cost a fortune. Perhaps in the future new homes may be required to do this.

mom2-4kids wrote:

I agree that some of those numbers reflect excessive water use, but in looking to conserve water, I think we all must consider HOW MANY people reside in a given residence and divide water usuage in a reaasonable fashion. I have a large family (often there are eight of us in residence...5 of them are home 24/7)... so they are not flushing or using water at an outside source...(work, school,etc) Not making excuse for Tiger or any of the others... but making restrictions based on residential usage should take into consider the number of persons in a household. I don't like paying more per thousand than my neighbor... who lives alone and here I have eight people using less water PER PERSON than he does. Just a thought.

following that logic you should not have to pay as much per gallon for gas either, especially when you have 5 to 8 of you in the car, gas should be charged by the CAR LOAD... you wish.

Quote:[Florida Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Heathrow, averaged 89,000 gallons a month during the past year. He said some monthly usage figures were bloated by a leak caused by the utility department. Otherwise, his watering has gone to good use on a yard that's difficult to keep green, he said.

"It's a big lot with a lot of grass on it," Dorworth said. "I've had to replace sod a number of times."]

As one person noted, Mr. Dorworth was briefly a member of the Seminole Soil and Water Conservation District, on which I now serve. The District's primary role is to encourage water conservation and as a former member, he should be setting a better example.

For the record, my family, which includes two teenage daughters, used just over 4,000 gallons last month, about 1/20th of the amount used by Dorworth.

This continual waste is now catching up to us in a very real way: Our spring flows are down, water rates are going up and now there are plans to begin pumping millions of gallons of water per day from the St. Johns River to irrigate lawns in new neighborhoods.(Yes, I know the river is flooded right now, but demand is highest in the dry season, not when we've had two feet of rain.)

The solutions are fairly simple: Increase rates dramatically for high-end users, cut rates for those who conserve, provide incentives (as Oviedo is doing) to encourge drought-tolerant plants, restrict the amount of grass permitted in new developments and encourage the use of cisterns and grey-water usage for irrigation.

Unfortunately, politics and money are getting in the way. Here's a perfect example: I spoke to a man this week who built a new house a few years ago in Winter Springs. He used "green" building guidelines and wanted to install an underground cistern to collect rainwater from his roof for irrigation. He was told "no." When he pressed for a reason, he was told the city makes too much money from delivering water to allow people to start going off the grid.

It's absolutely ridiculous, but all-too-common. Cities, counties and other utility providers have a financial disincentive to conserve. So, while they pay lip service to the concept, they too often fall short in actions.

Our aquifer is like a checkbook. As long as deposits (rain) keep up with withdrawals (water for drinking, bathing, etc.) everything is fine. But for too long we have treated this precious resource like a credit card, running up huge debts for our children.

It's time we put a stop to this madness and embrace a conservative ethic that ensures we live within our means. We owe it to our children.

Steve Barnes
Seminole Soil and Water Conservation District
Group 2 Supervisor
www.votestevebarnes.com

I called Orange County Utilities one time to ask why my bill was so high. Within two days the "Water Nazis" came by my house in the middle of the night and a few days after that I received a little note saying they just happened to notice I was watering my lawn at 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday and that is not allowed on Tuesdays at my address.

I was threatened with all kinds of action if I did not immediatly comply with restriction orders.

After checking my sprinkler timer I saw what had happened. I was limiting my sprinklers to the proper number of days, two, and I was even within the time allowed. But I was only supposed to water on something like Mondays and Thursdays and not on any other day.

So here you have a case of water nazis being tipped off by the account department so they can drive around at night and try to catch us doing something wrong, and people like Tiger Woods being able to water as much as they want and whenever they want. They only have to pay a little more and they don't care about that because they have all kinds of money.

And further more, these water hogs live in gated communities. You know what that means don't you? Right, no water nazis are going to be checking up on them.

So is that being fair Orange County Utilities or do you refuse to answer?

I found out that by only showering 3 times a week that I save a lot of water.

garym1a2 wrote:

I found out that by only showering 3 times a week that I save a lot of water.

If you're retired and doing nothing but sitting at home that might not be unreasonable.

Growing up back in the 50's we conserved water by not flushing the toilet after taking a #1. It only got flushed after a #2. Also at bath time(actual baths not showers) we were only allowed to put about 3 inches of water in the tub any more than that was wasteful.

Wonder how much Sam Zell uses? How about the Orl Sentinel offices/bulidings?

old curmudgeon wrote:

Growing up back in the 50's we conserved water by not flushing the toilet after taking a #1. It only got flushed after a #2. Also at bath time(actual baths not showers) we were only allowed to put about 3 inches of water in the tub any more than that was wasteful.

The guys can use a tree in the yard.

Steve knows what he's talking about, remember him in November. However, Steve, if I still got a bunch of checks left in my checkbook, how come I ain't got no money????

This clown Dorworthless is a complete clown. I guess any press is good press? Complete joke. Can't wait for his skeletons surface. Dorworthless and Smelling are going down.

There is no need to use this much water, this makes me sick

KKatt wrote:

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On a trip to Bermuda once, I was so excited about the collection of water in cisterns (they collect the rain water off the roof and it goes into underground cisterns for home use). That was until someone there told me their rain water is so clean, they can use it with very little chemical cleaning. Is OUR water that clean? It would be for the yard, but collecting it and building cisterns underground would cost a fortune. Perhaps in the future new homes may be required to do this.

I understand that if you have a shingle roof you should not drink runoff from that, but it probably wouldn't hurt you too bad...but sure if you have a metal or tile roof rainwater is going to be pretty darn clean. A cistern should be pretty cheap, a few hundred gallon HDPE tank would work fine. Then you'd probably need a small pump and you wouldn't want to hook it up to city water, that would be illegal, it might cause contamination...

get real wrote:

[QUOTE who="Tired of it All"]Where are you getting your information? If you use ionic exchange and regenerated with salt you may put sodium into the soil. But this is hardly ever done on a commercial scale. Most use R.O. which takes most of the salt out of water. But you are right about it being expensive as it takes lots of energy to run the equipment that does the job. Also the brine left over has to be treated and that is also very expensive.
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RO still leaves dissolved salts <500 ppm. and some other nasty things like boron left behind.
Boron, for example, is found in very low levels in average U.S. drinking
water supplies (a survey of 100 U.S. drinking water supplies showed a
median boron concentration of 0.03 milligrams per liter (mg/l))
(Mastromatteo and Sullivan 1994), but much higher levels are normally
found in seawater (typical concentrations are between 4 and 7 mg/l).
Boron is known to cause reproductive and developmental toxicity in animals
and irritation of the digestive tract. It also accumulates in plants,
raising concern about high boron levels in water used for irrigation or
landscaping (ATSDR 1995). RO membranes can remove between 50%
and 70% of this element but pass the rest, where it is then concentrated
in the product water. Concern has been expressed that boron may be
found in desalinated water at levels greater than the World Health
Organization’s provisional guideline of 0.5 mg/l and the California Action
Level of 1 mg/l (WHO 2003, CDHS 2005). Some membranes and
processes are being developed to improve boron removal (Toray 2005).
For example, the Long Beach Water Department adjusts the sodium
hydroxide levels between stages of the two-stage NF process, which
changes the chemistry of boron (by changing the size and charge) and
improves boron removal (Cheng 2006). Other methods for addressing
boron include blending the desalinated product water with water containing
low boron levels, but all of these methods will entail greater
expense. Arsenic, small petroleum molecules, and some microorganisms
unique to seawater are also capable of passing though RO membranes
and reaching the product water (Cotruvo 2005).

I can understand a large lot needing more water, but the amount of water some of these water hogs are using is astounding. I also need to point out that if you factor in the amount of watering days we are supposed to adhere to it would almost be impossible to use that amount of water in a mere ten days a month! Why could I be fined for watering on an off day but someone who has a large lot isn't? The watering restrictions need to be enforced for everyone.