Water Issues Why and how we need to be more gently efficient with our use of water: In Southern California we obtain most of our water from four sources: from the East side - the Colorado River, and from the North - the Los Angeles and California Aqueducts which bring water from the Owens Valley and Northern California; the fourth source is under our feet – ground water from several aquifers, like the Raymond Aquifer under the Arroyo. More recently, all of the first three sources of our water have been reduced by drought and by Federal Court intervention [October 31, 2007] to protect the Smelt [a small fish] in the Sacramento Delta. The fourth source of our water has recently been receiving a lot of attention – right now it is the easiest and cheapest source to expand. [During an average wet season, the City of Los Angeles sends 100 million gallons of storm water into the Pacific each day...] So we are under pressure to really stop irrigation runoff which goes to storm drains and then out to the ocean [along with a lot of pollution]. Other conservation ideas like permeable surfaces for driveways and patios are also being strongly encouraged. Through the use of bioswales, cisterns and stormwater infiltration systems like Eco-Rain recycled plastic crate systems, stormwater can be encouraged to enter and percolate back down into the ground to be reused. The California State Legislature recently set a goal of reducing overall urban per capita water use 20% by 2020. To encourage this effort, water agencies will be shifting to conservation pricing, user incentives and more effective legislation like the new Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. In California we use three times as much water as Europeans and four times as much as Australians. Just using a next generation irrigation timer like the Weathermatic Smartline® series which acts like a thermometer and dials up and down the water applied according to the weather, landscape watering can often be reduced by 20-50% especially for previously overwatered gardens. There are other technologies like drip irrigation that can help enormously as well; and again just reducing lawn areas really helps. Being more water efficient is a double winner of course, as using less water uses less energy [carbon dioxide production in pumping it] and it lowers your maintenance expenses as well.