Top Water Users

This letter is in response to Margaret Casey, who was interviewed in your article “City’s Elite Gain Notice as Its Biggest Water Users,” (Feb. 22). Ms. Casey is owner of a 3-acre lot in La Jolla, using an average of 6,515 gallons of water per day. She argues that, if her lot were divided into five smaller lots, those lots would together consume even more water. Ms. Casey needs to check her arithmetic, first of all, and, second of all, her reasoning.

As your article states, the average household uses 349 gallons of water per day. Multiply this number by Ms. Casey’s hypothetical five lots, and you get 1,745 gallons of water, a mere fraction of the 6,515 gallons Ms. Casey’s household uses alone.

To regard the situation more accurately, suppose her 3-acre lot were divided by the average size of a lot in San Diego: about a sixth of an acre. The quotient would be 18 lots. Collectively, these 18 households would consume 6,282 gallons of water per day, still short of Ms. Casey’s 6,515 gallons.

Consider now the gist of her reasoning. The Census Bureau tells us that the average number of people per San Diego household is 2.63. Each day, then, 6,515 gallons of water supports only Ms. Casey’s household as well as landscaping. Were her lot divided into 18 smaller lots, the same 6,515 gallons of water would support 47.34 people as well as landscaping.

Unfortunately, in the real world, one size lot does not replace another.

Whether it is Ms. Casey or her landscaping that is consuming so much water, it is difficult to justify a single household using thousands of gallons every day.

While not trying to single out Ms. Casey, one can plainly recognize her household as an example of extravagant waste of a valuable resource. It is imperative that we all, including the “elite” of San Diego County, realistically assess our use and abuse of water, and respond in kind.

BRIAN H. LANE, San Diego Water Recycling Systems Co., La Jolla