Water and common sense
A couple of trickles following a flood of water news this week in North Carolina and the Triad:
-- Among the most interesting ideas I heard during an editorial writers roundtable in Chapel Hill Sunday was this priceless morsel of common sense: Why not install residential water meters inside the house where people can see them round the clock?
And why not have those meters use measures that average people can read and understand?
I bet consumption would take a significant drop.
It always has puzzled me that cities want customers to conserve but use such hieroglyphic measuring terms and techniques.
-- It's OK now to use gray water to irrigate plants in North Carolina. State officials lifted a kibosh on the practice this week. They've determined that fears of "pathogens" washed off our bodies from used bath water posing a public health risk were greatly exaggerated.
Other states have allowed the practice for years.
"If the water is clean enough to bathe your child or wash your dishes in, it should be clean enough to put on your flowers," Bill Ross, secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resoutces, told the News & Observer of Raleigh.
Psssst. I know a lot of people who were doing it anyway.
-- The Triangle may be considering a regional authority to address its long-term water needs.
Isn't it nice to know that the Triad already has done that with Randleman Lake?
Despite some lingering turf tensions, the Randleman project is a success, as is the regional authority that oversees it.