Questo articolo pubblicato nell'edizione domenicale del Washington Post mette in evidenza un grande problema che assilla la California: l'acqua. La siccita' che da anni sta demolendo le risorse idriche dello stato piu' potente della Federazione ha costretto le autorita' a qualsiasi livello a emanare norme molto restrittive sull'uso e l'abuso dell'acqua. Come si legge qui sotto a protestare sono i ricchi che sono disposti a pagare ancora di piu' di quanto gia' facciano pur di avere l'acqua che serve loro per mantenere i prati perfettamente verdi, le grandi piscine riempite al limite e via citando. Ma il riscaldamento globale del pianeta non fa eccezioni. Le imponenti proprieta' delle persone facoltose in California stanno perdendo velocemente valore sul mercato immobiliare ed e' cominciata la fuga verso regioni che offrono acqua in quantita'. Il vostro redattore a Washington DC paga piu' di 130 dollari al mese per il consumo di acqua. Si tenga presente che a questo si deve aggiungere la provvista di galloni di acqua minerale del Colorado perche' quella del rubinetto e' imbevibile. Questa e' l'altra faccia dell'America. Forse un monito per quei connazionali che l'acqua la sprecano e non la pagano e per quelle amministrazioni locali che non si preoccupano delle perdite nelle condotte e tubature. Presto arrivera' anche per l'Italia un 'redde rationem' per l'acqua e allora saranno ulteriori cavoli amari.
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Rich Californians balk at limits: ‘We’re not all equal when it comes to water’ (Washington Post)
People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”
Yuhas
lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic
Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country
clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide
average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent
reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.
But
a moment of truth is at hand for Yuhas and his neighbors, and all of
California will be watching: On July 1, for the first time in its
92-year history, Rancho Santa Fe will be subject to water rationing.“It’s no longer a ‘You can only water on these days’ ” situation, said Jessica Parks, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which provides water service to Rancho Santa Fe and other parts of San Diego County. “It’s now more of a ‘This is the amount of water you get within this billing period. And if you go over that, there will be high penalties.’ ”
A
sign posted along the side of the road heading into Rancho Santa Fe
reminds residents about watering cycles.
So far, the community’s 3,100 residents have not
felt the wrath of the water police. Authorities have issued only three
citations for violations of a first round of rather mild water
restrictions announced last fall. In a place where the median income is
$189,000, where PGA legend Phil Mickelson once requested a separate
water meter for his chipping greens, where financier Ralph Whitworth
last month paid the Rolling Stones $2 million to play at a local bar,
the fine, at $100, was less than intimidating.All that is about to change, however. Under the new rules, each household will be assigned an essential allotment for basic indoor needs. Any additional usage — sprinklers, fountains, swimming pools — must be slashed by nearly half for the district to meet state-mandated targets.
Residents who exceed their allotment could see their already sky-high water bills triple. And for ultra-wealthy customers undeterred by financial penalties, the district reserves the right to install flow restrictors — quarter-size disks that make it difficult to, say, shower and do a load of laundry at the same time.
In extreme cases, the district could shut off the tap altogether.
The restrictions are among the toughest in the state, and residents of Rancho Santa Fe are feeling aggrieved.
“I
think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly
scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for
a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages
about $800 a month.Rancho Santa Fe residents are hardly the only Californians facing a water crackdown. On Friday, the state said it would impose sharp cutbacks on senior water rights dating back to the Gold Rush for the first time in four decades, a move that primarily hits farmers. And starting this month, all of California’s 400-plus water districts are under orders to reduce flow by at least 8 percent from 2013 levels.
Top water users such as Rancho Santa Fe are required to cut consumption by 36 percent. Other areas in the 36-percent crosshairs include much of the Central Valley, a farming region that runs up the middle of the state, and Orange County, a ritzy Republican stronghold between San Diego and Los Angeles.
“I call it the war on suburbia,” said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba City, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code.
Barbre sits on the 37-member board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a huge water wholesaler serving 17 million customers. He is fond of referring to his watering hose with Charlton Heston’s famous quote about guns: “They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”
“California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom,” Barbre said. “It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”
Jurgen Gramckow, a sod farmer north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, agrees. He likens the freedom to buy water to the freedom to buy gasoline.
“Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban,” Gramckow said. “Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”
“I’m a conservative, so this is strange, but I defend Barbra Streisand’s right to have a green lawn,” said Yuhas, who splits his time between Rancho Santa Fe and Los Angeles. “When we bought, we didn’t plan on getting a place that looks like we’re living in an African savanna.”
“I kind of take it personally,” she said last week as she toured the community in an SUV bearing the water district’s logo.
Parks said she doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she has heard rumors that some people jacked up their water use in a misguided attempt to increase their baseline before rationing kicks in. With sprinkler restrictions already in place, she said the dynamic between local gardeners and her small team of enforcers is getting interesting.
“Everyone seems now to know what our cars look like,” she said. In Fairbanks Ranch, a gated community, “whenever one of our trucks go in, the gardeners all seem to call each other — text-message each other — to let them know that we’ve arrived. So then all of a sudden we see water kind of draining off the property but no sprinklers on.”
Because
the restrictions that took effect in September didn’t register, the
district further tightened the screws this month. Sprinkler days were
reduced from three a week to two, while car-washing and garden fountains
were banned altogether.
Holly
Manion, a real estate agent who has lived on the Ranch, as it’s often
called, for most of her 62 years, supports the restrictions. Although
Manion cherishes the landscape of manicured lawns and burbling fountains
that has long defined the Ranch, she thinks the drought requires a new
way of life that emphasizes water conservation.
“Just take a
drive around the area. You’ll see lakes low, rivers dry and hillsides
parched,” Manion said, adding that she is appalled by people who
tolerate leaking sprinklers and the resulting cascades of wasted water.“There are people, they aren’t being responsible,” she said. “They’re just thinking of their own lives.”
Ann Boon, president of the Rancho Santa Fe Association, insists that most residents are taking the drought seriously. She said she was shocked by the reported 9 percent increase, arguing that it “must be some anomaly.”
“Everybody has been trying to cut back,” she said.
Visitors on the lawn at the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe. (Sandy Huffaker/The Washington Post)
For
example, many Rancho Santa Fe residents have enthusiastically embraced
drought-tolerant landscaping. Manion took advantage of a rebate to rip
out much of the turf on her three-acre property and replace it with
succulents and decomposed-granite pathways. She left only a small patch
of grass for her two dogs to play on.“It makes me happy when I look at it, because it’s thriving,” she said.
Butler
said she, too, is replacing grass with drought-friendly native
landscaping on her four acres, at a cost of nearly $80,000. (She’ll get a
rebate for about $12,000.) But she came to the decision grudgingly, she
said. And she defends the amount of water she and her neighbors need
for their vast estates.
“You could put 20 houses on my property,
and they’d have families of at least four. In my house, there is only
two of us,” Butler said. So “they’d be using a hell of a lot more water
than we’re using.”
Rancho
Santa Fe resident Randy Woods was feeling burdened by his lush
landscape and opted to downsize. The 60-something chief executive of a
biotech company moved a year ago from a two-acre estate — replete with
two waterfalls, two Jacuzzis, a swimming pool and an orchard — to a
condo in the tiny core of town known as “the Village.”
Woods said
some of his friends would like to do the same, largely to cut down on
their bloated water bills. But they have encountered an unforeseen
obstacle, he said: The drought has dampened demand for large estates in
San Diego County.Woods said his girlfriend is among those struggling to sell. Her home boasts a yard designed by Kate Sessions, a well-known landscape architect and botanist who died in 1940. But now, the rare palm tree specimens, the secret garden and the turret-shaped hedges are a liability rather than a selling point.
Another friend, Woods said, has seen the value of his nine-acre plot plummet from $30 million to $22 million.
As for Woods, his monthly water bill has shriveled from $500 to around $50.
“My friends,” he said, “are all jealous.”
