no, my high usage is a combo of attempting to encourage high growth and deep roots for 9 trees that are about 2 years old, but also many more laundry runs for work uniforms and office uniforms and workout uniforms.

by “relatively shallow water table” do you mean the water table is close to the surface or that the aquafier only extends down a short distance. in my section, when i drilled three weeks ago, the first 6 feet (and this was close to the over watered trees) was dry dirt, the next 9 feet was damp clay. then hit hard yellow sandstone.

wouldn’t tree roots have difficulty getting thru clay, no matter how damp?

And Patrick is so right about the amazing water-holding power of our clay soils. I have several plants in my garden which grew faster the less water I gave them. My citrus trees do very well without water almost all summer long.

By simply paying some attention to how I was using water: in my garden, taking showers, washing dishes by hand, etc., I was able recently to reduce my consumption by 40%. And this is without the use of energy-efficient applicances or toilet or shower or doing any sort of careful planning about watering my plants.

My guess is that water use in the state as a whole quite feasibly could be reduced by 50%. Including agriculture. That means without economic or quality-of-life sacrifice. Unfortunately because Californians generally are so averse to lifestyle changes, or heaven-forbid, the notion of being denied anything, our planning agencies set very limited resource conservation goals, like 15% for water (I think this was EBMUD’s conservation goal for this year before conservation plans were dropped in light of the late rains last spring).

I also must admit that my plants are the glad recipients of occasional liquid gold. Diluted! OK, so maybe I use more “greywater” than I thought.

len, may I assume you shepherd a large, resource-intensive and bio-incompatible monoculture (otherwise known as a lawn)? While I’m on my soapbox, let me just mention that in just 60 square feet, you can easily provide the entire produce needs of a family of four (including neighborhood giveaways and canning). Especially in this climate, where chard can grow to attack size and cherry tomatoes spread to the dimensions of former City Administrators. I’m currently rolling in mint, chives, zucchini, cucumbers, romas, potatoes, leeks and kale. Plums, apples and blueberries are over – navel oranges won’t be ready until at least February (late).

in the dry season, how are you watering the fruit trees?

-len

For sure, the water contracts and pricing agreements in California are crazy, wildly giving away water to some farmers and denying to others. Does anyone know if that was part of what the Schwartz is trying to overhaul or are those water allocations perpetual? If perpetual, then we have to work with the fact that farming will get huge amounts of cheap water and urban areas will suffer.

It would be very costly to retrofit high density buildings with greywater systems. I would think you’d have to install new water and sewer lines to utilize that greywater. We’re not even maintaining the 80 year old lines we have now.

It is expensive to retrofit single family homes with greywater systems plus the users have to be very careful what they throw down the drain. Besides the plumbing costs, you have to tear into interior walls and ceilings, penetrate outer walls, dig trenches and underground storage tanks and/ord irrigation systems.

Of course EBMUD has to push private users to phase out lawns, etc. but we still need more storage capacity to get thru several consecutive dry years.

-len raphael
temescal

If you were aboriginal, and very, very large, it would make a perfect didgeridoo. If you are average size, it’s like being inside a didgeridoo.

It’s either water or sewage or something, 18″x 300 yards or so. If you go to one end and your buddy goes to the other, you can hear each other perfectly, like you were 5 feet away. Cool echoes – clap.

The sign says the street is closed Oct 15-25 so get there fast; but this is Oakland so you might have until Christmas or so. I hope nobody crawls in and gets stuck. Especially if we’re gonna be drinking the stuff.