News-Record.com

The News & Observer reports that Durham has only 59 days of water left.

So the city has upped its conservation level from "moderate mandatory" to "severe mandatory. That means, in addition to an already existing ban on outdoor watering, commercial and residential users are being encouraged to reduce consumption by 50 percent. But there are no penalties for those who fail to comply.

I don't mean to sound flip, but how can restrictions be called mandatory if they only involve goals? For instance, commercial users are only required to submit lists of measures they are taking to conserve.

The honor system.

Meanwhile, a noted expert on sustainable water told public radio's "Fresh Air" Tuesday that the whole country needs to rethink how it uses water. And that if we'd been smart from the startt, we wouldn't have done dumb things such as building big cities in the middle of the desert.

By the way, Peter Gleick, a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, Peter
also thinks bottled water is a wasteful and unnecessary.

He thinks climate change is affecting the water supply, making dry places dryer and rainy places wetter ... meanng more drought and more floods.

Among Gleick's other thoughts:

The U.S. has done an exemplary job of providing safe drinking water that is generally free of water-borne diseases that still plague most of the rest of the world.

The U.S. uses less water today than it did 20 years ago, "a lot less" per person.

A growing economy needn't require more water consumption.For instance, he says, in the 1930s, it took 200 tons of water to make a ton of steel. In the 1980s it took 20 tons of water to make a ton of steel. Today, it takes three to four tons of water to make a ton of steel.

Today's droughts are caused by: Weather patterns. Climate change. Growing populations in areas with meager water supplies.

It takes three to four liters of water to make one liter of bottled water (that includes the water needed to manufacture the plastic bottle).

Long term it makes sense to stop using drinking water for toilets and irrigation -- to build houses with two sets of pipes ... one with water for irrigation and one for drinking.

To listen to the interview, click here.