Tear out your lawn, check. Drought-tolerant plants, check. Next up: recycled water
LOS ANGELES -- Tearing out our lawns is a good start toward wiser water use in Southern California, but it's not enough.
To do the job properly, we must also be ready to collect the rain that will someday fall out of the sky, advocates say. And these people have a vision that not only stores increasingly precious rainwater, but puts it to use for everything from drip irrigation to aquaculture to waterfalls surrounded by lush plantings and the soothing music of running (albeit recycled) water.
Yes, we're in a drought, but this is about being ready for the next downpour.
"If we're going to adapt to climate change, we need to recognize the impacts on the region, which means longer dry cycles and extreme rain events, so when it rains, it will rain more intensely," said Melanie Winter, founder and director of the River Project, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring the Los Angeles River watershed. "We're basically looking at aridification and flood."
At a minimum, this means we should be installing gutters on our barrels, because they're not big enough to hold the water that pours off a roof in a single rainfall, Winter said.
