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OPINION

Westbrook: Ideas for change should be offered

Posted

In response to Bud Meador’s article on water conservation, may I suggest that readers not only reach out to their elected city, county and state representatives but that they offer some solutions as well.

We have known for years that our water supply has been diminishing annually and yet we have waited until it has reached a crisis stage to consider doing anything to conserve and reuse water..

In addition to using desert landscaping, we should try to retrofit our current homes and commercial buildings with systems to capture and store water runoff from our rooftops and streets. Many people use rain barrels to collect water from their homes for irrigation. In some cities you can find swales or small lakes that have captured street runoff and are using it either for irrigation or to recharge aquifers. I think everyone realizes how wasteful and costly a leak in an irrigation system can be, and most residents try to fix that as soon as they are aware of it. For a reasonable cost recirculation devices for hot water can be installed in most homes and eliminate using gallons of water to get hot water flowing to faucets and showers.

As for population growth, I suggest that our representatives require systems to capture water from rooftops and streets on all new residential and commercial buildings and developments.

In addition to that, we know that the use of EVs is going to increase and existing homes can and should install solar systems to utilize our 300 days of sunshine. All new residential and commercial construction should be required to have solar systems as well. 

Linda Westbrook

Sun City West