A Major California Water Waster Left Out of the Conservation Pool

VIEWS FROM HERE-With all the talk about the worst drought in modern California history that has just precipitated- no pun intended- Governor Jerry Brown imposing a mandatory 25% cut in residential water consumption, there is one major consumer- and if you will- waster of precious water that has somehow gone unaddressed in the media and elsewhere- and that is swimming pools. 

Anyone who owns a pool can tell you about the neverending addition of constantly evaporating water that only gets worse as the weather gets warmer. And you don't have a choice, since if you let the level of the water in your pool drop too low, your pool motor will suck air and burn up. 

The water used in pools in Los Angeles easily dwarfs the water used on lawns, but somehow pools that can average 30,000 gallons of water or more have never been considered in the discussion of water conservation. Why do you think that is? Is there a strong lobby representing pool service and cleaning companies- I don't think so. I would venture a simpler reason: Americans who have only recently come to the physical limits of this country and have never had to deal with the scarcity. 

Elsewhere, Europeans and others in the world have always been confronted with scarcity as a fact of everyday life. That was only exacerbated by the privation suffered during events like the Second World War. 

Something as mundane as stairwell lighting in a Parisian apartment building, going off after a couple of minutes to save electricity, is something not on the radar of an American living in Los Angeles. 

Angelenos will run a pool motor 6-8 hours a day year-round, add expensive chemicals, pay for cleaning, and add thousands of gallons of water to replace that which is constantly evaporating for the pleasure of swimming maybe 3 months out of the year- you get more swimming time in the Valley, but then again you evaporate more water in the Valley's hotter temperatures. Of course, you could always heat your pool in colder times of the year, but that would add another $200-300 a month in gas bills, unless you invested in solar. 

You would think that LADWP might have pointed out this egregious over consumption of water by pool owners, since they have all the statistics at their finger tips, when it comes to water consumption. 

But this insular self-serving and overpaid LADWP fiefdom is too busy trying to figure out how to avoid paying residential producers of solar energy for the super abundance of excess electrical energy they could produce during peak commerical consumption hours. 

And besides, LADWP has been screwing pool owners for years in their sewer charges on their bi-monthly bills, which are calculated on water consumed and not on the water that actually winds up in the sewer, which is supposed to be the basis of sewer use charges in the first place. 

When I was a kid my father, who had gone through the Great Depression of 1929 would always say, "When you leave a room, turn off the light, we don't own stock in the electric company." Now, the wasting of energy has become an affectation of wealth. 

Maybe that's why my folks who came from Chicago with its horrendous winters had to have a swimming pool when they built their dream house in Northridge in the late 1950s. And guess who got stuck cleaning it? With an ocean nearby, I never went swimming in the pool. My dad would often ask, "Why did I build this pool? And I'm sure many pool owners today- me include- continue to ask the same question as we continue to shell out money that would be better spent elsewhere. 

Yes, I too have a pool energy sink hole in my backyard simply because it came along with the only house I could afford back in 1986 when I bought the place. Not much good for swimming laps, so I go over to the Jewish Center on Olympic and San Vicente to swim. 

But there too I am confronted by showers that have the force of firehoses. And although I have written for months to the director and others to put restricters in the showers, as to date no one in the Center has responded to my query or lessened this easily avoidable waste. 

Maybe Governor Brown will have more luck in getting Angelenos and other Californians to turn down the tap. In any case, if you can figure out how to get the pool out of my backyard it's yours.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected] ) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 30

Pub: Apr 10, 2015