Awash in Wild Ideas to Save Water

It’s a small, relatively simple document, really, considered insignificant in some parts of the world.

But in these times in this land, it is a writ around which law-abiding people proudly center their lives. Its declarations affect their daily existence in the most public and private places. Merely reading it is enough to put a lump in their throats.

The document? It’s not the Bill of Rights, just the bill--the water bill.

With water in relative short supply and mandatory rationing--which includes inflated fees for those who don’t conserve--under way in many Southern California cities, many residents would rather pay attention to the ways they use water than pay an exorbitant monthly bill.

Exactly how people conserve, of course, is left to them. There are stories--some apocryphal--of people going to long lengths to cut back. Everything from neighbors banding together, checking into a motel room and sending family members through the shower one by one, then promptly checking out, to tenants banning visitors from their bathrooms.

In response to a recent Department of Water and Power survey that asked residents how they had saved water, one man responded: “I got rid of my pet fish.”

“There are people who are going to every extreme possible to save water,” said George Martin, a Los Angeles city waterworks engineer.

“I heard of one guy who uses a marking device in his bathroom,” he said. Every time he uses the toilet, he marks it down. He marks it 20 times before flushing. Some people are concerned about wasting one gallon of water. They are looking for ways to save.”

Others have found their ways, usually not without a measure of inconvenience.

Mike Moore, 27, who owns a home in Altadena, has gone, in his own words, “just a little conservation crazy.” His wife, Jacquie, 24, abbreviates the description to “just crazy.”

Over the last month, Moore has made it a household policy to collect water that would otherwise go to waste and store it in milk jugs, plastic trash bins and other spare containers.

“I keep a bucket in the shower so I can save the first five or 10 gallons while I’m waiting for the water to get hot,” Moore said. “I do the same thing when I shave or when I’m in the kitchen.”

Water containers can be found in almost every room in the house.

“There’s another 50 gallons or so out in the garage,” he said. “We have about 10 garbage cans around the yard to collect water from the down spouts, too.”

Moore uses the water for house plants and the fruit trees in the back yard.

“It sounds crazy, I know,” he said. “My wife thinks I’m losing it, but I lived through a drought in Northern California during the 1970s when we couldn’t flush the toilet and everyone’s lawn died. I don’t want my lawn and trees to die, so I save the water.”

One of Moore’s neighbors, Jim Sawyer, took a slightly different approach: He got rid of his water-hogging lawn, replacing it with 16 tons of Mexican beach pebbles--a euphemism for rounded gravel.

“I’ve always tried to save water with slow-flow shower heads and by turning the water off while I brush my teeth,” said Sawyer, a free-lance musician.

He went full-bore with his convictions when a friend suggested last summer that he tear up his lawn. He hauled out the grass and put in a drip system to water shrubs and trees in planters around the yard.

“It was a big operation,” he said. “It took a crew of four guys about three weeks to finish it.”

Since its completion, the hardest part--for Sawyer and his neighbors--has been getting used to looking at this water-saving ground cover. Sawyer is the only homeowner in the neighborhood with a rock quarry for a yard.

“People think it’s different,” he said. “I can tell people aren’t wild about it, but nobody has told me I’m crazy, at least not to my face. I didn’t want to make the neighborhood look weird. I guess I thought, with the water situation, it was a responsible thing to do. I figure my neighbors are at least sympathetic regarding my reasoning behind it.”

“I think it’s ugly,” one neighbor offered on the condition that she remain anonymous. “But I suppose it does help with the drought and all.”

Jack Tritch, 63, would rather concentrate on conserving water inside his house in Eagle Rock. To keep his water bill down, Tritch rigged up a device that recycles rinse water in his washing machine.

It works like this: Water used in the wash cycle is discharged out a hose into the yard. Water used in the rinse cycle is hosed into a large plastic trash barrel from which it can be pumped or bailed back into the washer to be used in the wash cycle for the next load.

“It saves us 30 gallons of water every time we wash clothes,” said Tritch, owner of a hardware store in Los Angeles. “It’s not a super-clean way to do it. It’s not like you push a button all clean and nice, but it does save water. Once you get into the swing of it, it’s easy.”

Technically, it’s also illegal. Because of health concerns, Los Angeles County has outlawed most uses of gray water--water that has been used, say, in a dish washer, washing machine, bathtub or shower. County officials say, however, that enforcing the law is difficult and complicated.

Tritch’s wife, Betty, says she does about eight large loads of laundry a week, for which her husband’s system saves the couple more than 200 gallons.

At his hardware store, Tritch has passed word of his system along to conservation-hungry customers seeking other devices, like water-efficient toilets, on which the Department of Water and Power offers rebates, and flow restricters.

Some residents without Tritch’s mechanical ingenuity are reducing water use by patronizing coin-operated laundries or professional cleaners.

“I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of people bringing us socks, towels, sheets, that kind of laundry,” said Carolyn Varian, owner of Bow Tie Cleaners in La Canada. “People probably think it’s a way for them to use more water at home.”

Apparently, laundry isn’t the only thing Southern Californians are taking out to be cleaned. Alice Goldberg of South Gate now routinely showers at her YMCA.

“Sure, I’m saving water at home because I shower at the Y,” she said. “It saves my water bill. I don’t know what it does for the Y, but it will save my bill.”

Ron Freides, manager at Bally’s Holiday Spa in Hollywood, says an increasing number of health club members are going out of their way to shower at the gym.

“Because of the drought, probably about half our members shower here,” he said. “We don’t encourage it, but it happens. We tell people to limit their showers to three minutes.”

Policing the showers can be a difficult proposition, however.

In an effort to keep water from running 24 hours a day in her home, Kay Huff of Pasadena, who has eight children (six of whom live at home), recently proclaimed that no one is allowed to take a shower more than every other day. And even then, it should be brief.

When Huff’s mandate went into effect in February, the four daughters still living at home nearly rebelled. Since then, the initial rebellion has settled into smoldering obedience.

“They still don’t like it,” said Huff, adding that before her new rule it was not uncommon for the girls to each take 20-minute showers daily. “If I catch them sneaking a shower, I say, ‘Hey, no way.’ I guess I’ve turned into the water sergeant.”

Perhaps Nancy and Woody Wright stumbled upon as unique a solution to California’s difficult water situation as anyone. In September, their household was one of a small number found by the Pasadena Department of Water and Power to have lowered consumption through the summer. When the department sent them their bill, it noted the accomplishment and asked how they had managed to conserve 20% during the hot season.

“At first, we weren’t sure how we did it,” said Nancy Wright. “Then, we realized that was the period during which our 18-year-old daughter, Kristi, was away from home. She was in Portugal as a foreign-exchange student.

“We saved $20 on our water bill, but we spent $3,000 sending our daughter to Europe to save the $20.”

Too bad the Department of Water and Power doesn’t give rebates on European vacations.