Snap o' the day: watering Northridge
Like a happy homeowner, UVA sprays water over the lush green lawn of its Northridge medical building on Ivy Road at 8:29am today. With no significant rainfall this month and urban users consuming nearly 11 million gallons per day, the three urban reservoirs have fallen–- though some of this is an intentional seasonal safety drawdown at the old Ragged Mountain reservoir–- to 84 percent of their full usable volume, according to the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority.
4 comments
There is no incentive for the RWSA to call on the public to voluntarily conserve water. When they call for conservation they lose money. That's why they want to build $200 million dollars of new infrastructure to pump more water and make more money. As one friend said to me today." More money equals more power, more status, bigger bureaucracy, and higher salaries. So they want the Ragged Mountain Dam/Pipeline project so they can pump more water. It hasn't rained in over a month but RSWA says we don't have a drought. They don't want conservation. They want more money"
So get ready to be hosed when your water bills skyrocket to pay for Dam Foolishness
Dredging plus conservation could save us $100 million and give us all the water we could possibly need for decades--
UVa's watering is pretty shameful.
However, RWSA's existing water plan is a good one, supported by solid science. Let's just hope the naysayers don't stall the plan, just as we appear to be entering another drought.
Science ? Our water supply plan should not be dependent on a science experiment designed by the Nature Conservancy and for which we are expected to pay over $200 million dollars, forfeit the best water source for city residents, and lose 54,000 trees at Ragged Mt. Natural Area.
Dredging will give us more water than a new highway hugging Reservoir at Ragged Mt. and cost tens of millions of dollars less.
Hope the scientists wouldn't stall dredging the Reservoir again.
This community had a plan to start dredging the Reservoir and put a bladder on the SFRR in 2002 . It was approved by all our officials and our water rates were doubled to pay for it. Now we've spent over $5million on consultants ans still no more water.
I agree UVA, which has been touting its Green Initiatives, should take a look at this picture
In response to the Hook's "Snap O' The Day", the real factual headline to that picture would have been: UVa Landscape Department avoids toxic pesticides when possible and uses natural pest control at Northridge and all around grounds. The one time application of a benificial nematode (tiny worms) required watering in to get them to where the grubs are in the lawn, so the irrigation was used for this purpose. That's the real story.