Water crisis

As many of you may know, Atlanta has been in a pretty severe drought for over a year. My county has all sorts of rules for the outdoor use of water, and a lot of people I know have started to adapt their water usage habits to conserve water. This is a really good example of resource scarcity forcing ingenuity and a shift to other lifestyles (one that I hope will also result from the high gas prices, but we will see).

One really interesting exemption from outdoor water usage is for reclaimed wastewater. This can mean a lot of things, but the most common are:

• Placing a bucket in the shower to collect water from washing your hair, etc. and using it to water your lawn or plants.
  
• Placing a bucket under the sink, with the pipe opening into it, to catch wastewater and use it as toilet water (that one is a little hardcore, admittedly)
• Catching rainwater in a barrel that then waters the lawn or your flower beds

These things all take a bit of adjustment, so in the meantime you may just install a more efficient showerhead, a dual-flush toilet, or use laundry detergents that allow you to decrease the amount of water you use.

What do you do to save water?

Another thing that I've had to deal with recently is that one of the water processing plants for my area lost power yesterday, and now we cannot bathe, cook with, or drink any tap water unless it is boiled first. I don't like using bottled water at all, especially now that I've switched to a Brita filter, but having to use it for washing veggies is just sort of ridiculous. Hopefully the water will get clean soon. I will say though--I really appreciate the convenience that water sanitation brings to my life.