Texas government has a lot of things that should
and should not be done by them, meaning handling local and government problems
to the best of their abilities and I decided to choose something that is a
major problem in the Texas right now and I don't think the government is doing
a good job at handling it and people aren't really getting it and that happens
to be the conservation of our water!
As you may know Texas is now in a stage 2 drought which means the combined
level of Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan which happen to be our region’s water
supply reservoirs have only a combined storage level of only 900,000 acres of
water and that is only 35% full of the 100% we're supposed to have. Because of
the low storage levels the Austin council members adopted a revised water
conservation code on August 16, 2012 with different water restrictions
including watering days and times.
I agree that they had to change the restrictions and get more specific
about water conservation because people really didn't see the problem with
watering your grass every day or washing your car at home because you didn't
want to spend money at a car wash or taking hour long showers and because no
one seen those everyday task being a problem we started losing tons and tons of
water every day!
Some of the restrictions are you can only water your yard one day a week,
no washing your cars at home because a study showed that washing your cars use
three times the amount of water than an automatic car wash, they also have a
water waste rule which is failure to repair a controllable leak which includes
a broken sprinkler, a leaking valve, or a broken pipe you must fix it immediately
and if you don't you'll be sent a warning and if you still fail to comply then
you will receive a citation until you fix the leak.
All customers who use water other than reclaimed water must follow the
drought stage 2 water restriction code and the only way to avoid it is to check
were your water is coming from and see what area you fall in or if you have
variances which is an acceptance from adherence water use regulations.
What the government fails to realize is not everyone is familiar with these
water laws and what the drought really is and how it’s getting worse and worse
every year and if they made more of an attempt to enforce these restrictions
and actually fine people and knowledge the minds of their Texas residents about
conserving water then maybe we could actually make a change and help with water
conservation.
If people knew that we're running low on water and it can and
will affect their lives in a negative way maybe they'll take action. The government should have weekly water conservation checks and make sure
everyone is using the amount of water their supposed to and if not they'll get
fined, they need to be more aware and actually be more involved in this too because
if they showed the public that they too themselves follow these water
restriction laws then maybe they'll get a better turn out!
In one of my classmate, Ms. Clark's article The World On A Political Scale she talked about the water conservation in Texas. She talks about how the water issue that we are having right now in Texas, how we are in a stage 2 drought, and all the ways that we can reduce our water wastage. She wants the government to take an extra to enforcing the rules that they set to actually help the water problem, and I agree with her.
ReplyDeleteEveryone uses water, it is one of the main resources that people need to survive, the 70% of earth is made up of water but that doesn't mean people could just waste it all. My classmate make a very nice point on how people are still watering their lawns, washing their cars, and taking hour long shower when we are clearly in a drought. The government needs to be more strict on all of the drought law due to the fact that we do not get rain.
She also talks about how the government could be stricter on the water laws like the weekly checks to see if we are not using too much water. Which seems fine because people wouldn't not take any of the water laws seriously unless the get a ticket or when the water runs out, and at the water rates now that could happen soon. I can agree with the argument that Ms. Clark in her Texas Water Conservation article.