When It Comes to Conservation, Go for the Gold

If you’re reading this at breakfast, you may already have used close to 50 gallons of water today.

If you’re reading this at dinner, make that 100. Enough to fill 20 of those bottles that get delivered to your door.

This water comes out of a tap, and every gallon could have traveled as far as 600 miles before reaching your shower or garden hose. Across the Sacramento Delta, maybe. Through several pumping stations, four different lakes, down a couple of rivers. And it costs about a 10th of a cent a gallon.

The Metropolitan Water District had expected that by the year 2010, there would be 13.9 million people in its Southern California service area. It is 1990, and already there are 15 million.

Ask any one of those how much water he uses. Oh, 10 or 20 gallons a day, he’ll guess.

Four people in one house use, on the average, 480 gallons a day. This is about how to use less of it. It combines the advice of the Department of Water and Power, the MWD, and those sundry omniscient beings whose voices echo in our ears: “Turn off that light/water/gas--do you think I’m made of money?”

THE SHOWER

Each minute in a gorgeous, steamy hydro-pummeling shower uses about five gallons of water. Thus, a 10-minute shower uses as much as 50 gallons.

Bronze medal: Take shorter showers.

Silver medal: Take shorter showers and install a low-flow shower head, which cuts the delivery rate by half, meaning you could take a 10-minute shower with 25 gallons. The DWP has mailed out 1.2 million of them, and MWD agencies are sending a million more. Where’s yours?

Gold medal: All the above, and a Navy-style “spit” shower, using the low-flow shower head’s on-off device. Get wet, turn off the water, soap yourself down, then rinse off. A push-button, on-off device keeps the water at a constant temperature so you don’t get a new blast of cold water. This technique could use as little as four gallons. The most patient and virtuous can stop up the drain, then bail out the water for plants or washing car. Or take a cue from the Glendora 6-year-old who, after his father explained the solemn new limitations imposed by drought, said: “Does that mean I don’t have to take a bath every night?”

SHAVING

The facial kind.

Bronze medal: Don’t shave in the shower. It adds time, and time is water. Shave in the sink.

Silver medal: The old-fashioned way, in the sink with a razor, and don’t let the water run. Fill the basin, turn off the water and use that. Open-tap full-bore method can use up to 20 gallons. Water-in-basin method uses one gallon.

Gold medal: Go electric. Or grow a beard. (Women: shave in the bath, go natural or stick with whatever non-shaving technique it is that just yanks the hairs out of your legs.)

THE TOILET

A delicate matter. Personal aesthetics figure into it. The general flush-less advice goes against years of indoctrination by the Tidy Bowl man and his ilk. Water experts advise that liquid waste can be flushed less often. Remember the flushing guide used during the 1978 drought: “Pooh, do. Pee, don’t.”

Bronze medal: Install a displacement device in your tank. Older toilets--more than 10 years--may use six or seven gallons per flush. Displacement reduces that by a half-gallon. The DWP handed these out by the thousands, too. Apartments and businesses are already required to have them. Limit other flushing, as well. “You should not use the toilet for a trash can,” says DWP’s George Martin. “If you kill a spider, you don’t put it in the toilet and flush it down. You wipe it up with a Kleenex and throw it in the trash can.”

Silver medal: All of the above, with a lower-flush 3.5-gallon tank. To go one better, set the plunger lower. The metal arm with the ball on the end is flexible. Bend it--the further the ball sits into the tank, the less water it takes to register as “full.” (Some have sliding adjusters.)

Gold medal: The ultra-low flush toilet, which uses 1.6 gallons and is already required in some new construction. Install one and get a $100 DWP rebate.

WASHING HANDS

One entry only. Like the shower, wet, turn off the water, soap, rinse.

BRUSHING TEETH

Simply stated: Do not leave the water running. A two-minute brushing with the water going full bore could use up to 10 gallons. If you just wet your brush, turn off the water, and rinse, a two-minute brushing can use as little as two quarts.

WASHING DISHES

Bronze medal: Not, as you might think, for eating out. A restaurant must use four glasses of water to clean every glass of water poured. At home, an automatic dishwasher or washing by hand when you let the rinse water run can use 15 to 30 gallons. Don’t run the dishwasher except with a full load.

Silver medal: A short cycle on a fully loaded dishwasher can use as little as seven gallons. Washing dishes by filling the sink or a dishpan can use as little as five gallons.

Gold medal: The above technique, then using the so-called “gray water” on flower beds or to scrub down a porch or deck. Phosphorous in the soap “ends up acting like a mild fertilizer,” says MWD spokesman Tim Scrove.

LAUNDRY

Bronze medal: Beating your clothes on rocks at the L.A. River. A noble but fruitless gesture.

Silver medal: Washing a full load on regular cycle can use 45 to 60 gallons. A short “water-saving” cycle and a minimum water level uses perhaps 27 gallons. Better to do five full loads than 10 half loads.

Gold medal: The above, and replumbing or simply unhooking the discharge line and rigging it to a cistern or a sturdy trash can with a coupler and a hose so the gray water can be used as described above.

AT WORK

Not much flexibility here. Unflushed toilets probably are not appreciated. When washing hands, wash hands , “instead of shooting the bull with somebody and letting the water run,” says DWP’s Martin. Rather, yammer at management to save, save, save.

WATERING

If you wanted your lawn to look like the back nine, why didn’t you buy a house on the 10th green at Augusta, Ga.? This is a desert. Besides, lawns mean lawn mowing, and even the fairly toothless city ordinance prohibits hosing down driveways and sidewalks. In their first week on patrol, Droughtbusters issued 195 citations. You have to sweep up the mess by hand.

Bronze medal: Water before 10 a.m. or after 5 p.m. Otherwise, half the water evaporates and never reaches the roots. When you do water the lawn, water deeply and infrequently, perhaps once every third day. Grass is trainable. Water potted plants as needed, not just because you’re watering the grass at the same time. Make sure sprinklers are sprinkling grass, not pavement.

Silver medal: Don’t have some silly, fragile East Coast grass; get a hardy California lawn. MWD’s Scrove waters his Bermuda once a week. “You could save (up to) 350 gallons just by eliminating one irrigation cycle any day you don’t water your lawn.”

Gold medal: Re-landscape for the xeriscape. Native, drought-tolerant plants save not only water but time. They belong here; they know how to take care of themselves.

WASHING CAR

That most visible and infuriating offense, an unchecked hose, runs at seven to 10 gallons a minute--70 to 100 gallons, while you’re scrubbing away at a spot of pigeon spoor.

Bronze medal: Turn the water off after wetting down the car. Washing with a bucket and a hose rinse can use as little as 20 gallons instead of up to 150.

Silver medal: A recycling car wash may use 20 or 30 gallons to wash yours, but recycles all but 5 or 10 gallons of it.

Gold medal: The malathion look--go with it. “Or you can buy a brown car,” says Scrove, “and no one will notice.”