FreshWater
One huge factor that limits our ability to grow as a community is our water resources. I intend to implement programs that will save water. The number one use of water in a residential setting is for landscaping. People love their green lawns, lush bushes and beautiful trees. I would offer incentives for residents to implement gray water recapture hardware in their homes. The water from their washing machines, dishwashers, and sinks can easily be captured and diverted to use for their greenery. That saves them money and saves the city water. It’s all about conserving what we have.
I pulled this from the City’s 2013 Comprehensive Water Report.
Based on the City’s current available water supply of 19,600 AFY, the City can meet the demands of the existing and approved development projects (18,643 AFY). However, at any time the available water supply could drop to an annual average of 18,000 AFY. In the circumstances where the water supply drops to the low end of the range, the supply is slightly (1%-2%) larger than the demand through year 2016, after which the water supply is less than the anticipated demand beginning in year 2017.
I added that to show you just how tight things are right now.
Our Ocean
Untreated storm water runoff is a big concern for me. All summer long we drive around our town. When the rains come, everything that has collected on the roads and storm drains washes straight into our marine environment. The pollutants included everything from motor oil, to transmission fluid, to asbestos from car brakes to rubber from our tires and a lot more. Tons of litter including fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, plastic and trash end up in our water. Has anyone NOT seen a picture of a bird or a whale or a sea lion wrapped up in a piece of trash and slowly being strangled or cut into pieces? There are many pollutants that come from agricultural activities too. Those include a wide variety of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. We depend upon our oceans. Did you know that we can’t eat any marine creatures that are considered filter feeders (e.g. mussels clams etc.) in the winter months because of runoff? After all, we are an ocean side community. It’s easy to forget that at times. If our ocean is not healthy then our community cannot be truly healthy either. We can do better to protect the ocean than we have been doing. I intend to work on that.