Drought Shamed By The Government, California Cities Out Top Water Users
Drought shaming is the newest social craze in California where the state’s historic four-year mega-drought has dried up reservoirs and left a million farming acres unplanted.
New apps are targeting water wasters and a Facebook page has sprung up with photos and addresses of water offenders. Now, California city governments are playing the game too.
Bakersfield, the California city most likely to run out of water last summer, just released a list of its top 100 water users and the list was quickly published by the local paper and several online outlets.
Last year the city came within 60 to 120 days of running out of water and apparently doesn’t want to repeat the experience.
The town’s biggest water consumer was the city itself, which used more than 674 million gallons of water followed by CSU Bakersfield with 220 million gallons and then the local high school district.
The top 10 Bakersfield water consumers used 1.7 billion gallons of water.
It just rained! #droughtshaming pic.twitter.com/2SpBr2Dmdp
— SpatialNinja.xrp (@SpatialNinja) July 19, 2015
The numbers reflect a similar list released by Orange County, which lists government offices and buildings, including schools, as the area’s top water consumers.
The water lists are a rare thing, as usage rates in California are normally kept secret from the public thanks to a series of measures specifically written to hide big businesses water consumption stats.
It’s a lot easier to compare the water usage rates of cities, and a study released in May showed wealthier cities in Southern California used significantly more water than their poorer counterparts. The affluent community of Villa Park, for example, used more than 330 gallons of water a day for each resident while the city of Seal Beach used only 52.4 gallons of water per person.
These staggeringly different numbers might be one reason new apps have sprung up allowing Californians to drought shame their neighbors through Facebook photos and Twitter posts.
The hashtag #DroughtShaming has been trending as more and more Californians step up to the governor’s challenge to reduce their water consumption by 30 percent.
Bakersfield, at least, doesn’t want to be caught out for not reducing the amount of water it goes through and last month was able to boast residents reduced their water intake by 34 percent.
So, citizens of California, tear up your grass, take shorter showers, talk to your neighbors and convince your local government agency to ease up on their sprinklers.
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/David McNew/Getty Images]
