Douglas/ Water

"In California, 80 percent of the demand for water lies in the southern two-thirds of the stat, most of which receives only a few inches of rainfall a year, while about 70 percent of California's available water falls as precipitation in the less-populated northern third of the state." (Robertson, 2014)

This may be the biggest problem that we will face in the near future. Over the last 10 years we have been hearing more and more stories about water shortage in places all around the world. In California they have been implementing different techniques to try to conserve the little water they have left. When I was out in California a couple of years ago you can see the lack of water everywhere. Water reservoirs and canals on the side of the road are dried up and show no sign of water. We need to develop new techniques to try to distribute water throughout the states when some of the state doesn’t get a lot of water. If we could find a way to get some of the water from the northern section of California down to southern California we would have less of a problem than we have now. But as of right now we have not developed a technique like that yet.

Water Shortage posted on www.southbayresidential.com

"In parts of the arid US West, 70 percent of residential water may be used for keeping lawns green." (Robertson, 2014)

This is crazy to me. I understand that we want our lawns to be nice and pretty but if we are running out of water something has to give. I work the night shift as a security guard and when I drive around my neighborhood there is so much waste of water. Lawns get watered two times a night and sometimes the sprinklers are pointed onto the street and are not watering anything. Another thing I see is the water running when it is raining. Why would we need to water our lawns when it is raining outside? If we can change some simple things it seems like we can cut back on the amount of water we use for our landscaping.

Watering Lawns posted on Huffington Post

"The saw grass stands drying to old gold and rustling faintly, ready, if there is a spark anywhere, to burst into those boiling red flames which crackle even at a great distance like a vast frying pan..." (Douglas, 2011)

This is what happened a couple of weeks ago. Right now we are in the dry season and haven’t gotten rain in a couple of months. This causes the grasses in the everglades to dry out and when a spark hits the dry grass, either by man or by nature, all the grass goes up into flames. This is a natural phenomenon that has happened for centuries but it effects us now because we are trying to develop as close to the everglades as possible and the flames can start to damage humans. Natural the flames would just die off but since it was threatening us we had to put it out. We see this battle with nature all over the US with wildfires damaging infrastructure.

Everglades Wildfire posted on Wild Fire Today

Douglas, M. S. (2011). The Nature of the Everglades. In University Colloquium: A Sustainable Future. Acton, MA: Copley Custom Textbooks

Robertson, M. (2014). Sustainability Principles and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.