25 Feb Why I Am Fired Up About Water Sustainability, and Why You Should Be Too!

Why I Am Fired Up About Water Sustainability, and Why You Should Be Too!

In an age of online activism, we should jump at opportunities to be physically present with like-minded people and in the presence of locally elected decision-makers who need to hear from us.

Thursday, March 11th, is one such opportunity for Austinites and Central Texans to come together and rally for water stewardship and sustainability, not spending $1.2 billion on a new water treatment plant so a few people can over-water their lawns in the hot summer.

Come to our Rally for Water Sustainability on March 11th from 4-7pm at Austin City Hall. You can RSVP on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=487339750345&ref=mf

We can speak out FOR draft recommendations of the Water Conservation Task Force that call for reducing water use about 2% per year for the next ten years.

We can speak out FOR watering our lawns no more than once a week in the summer.

We can speak out FOR saving rate-payers $1.2 BILLION in projected costs (including interest payments on borrowed money) by putting the proposed water treatment plant on the shelf while the City updates the 30-year old Comprehensive Plan. (Shouldn’t our long-range plan have some impact on infrastructure decisions that will cost rate-payers over a billion dollars?)

We can speak out FOR saving the endangered Jollyville Plateau salamander, whose prime habitat (springs along Bull Creek) could be drained dry by the water treatment plant’s transmission mains and massive tunnels through thousands of feet of karst Edwards Aquifer and Glen Rose limestone.

If we don’t speak up, and soon, a one-vote majority will sink Austin into decades of debt to pay back money used to build a water treatment plant that we don’t need. Water rates will keep going up (they raised single family rates 10.1% last year).

There is a simple short-term solution: adopt the once-a-week watering schedule for the summer. We did it last year when the drought forced us to – the combined capacity of lakes Travis and Buchanan went below drought trigger levels. And we did fine. Nobody got hurt when we only watered once a week. You could still hand-water and water with rainwater. We got by.

Austinites are willing to embrace the fact that we live on the edge of desert and likely face hotter summers than in our recent past.

It’s time one more City Council Member joined Council Members Laura Morrison, Chris Riley, and Bill Spelman in voting to stop spending on the Mistake on the Lake, the Billion Dollar Boondoggle, water treatment plant 4.

You can help make a difference in Austin’s water future: will we choose sustainability or sticking to 19th century water planning? Come to City Hall on March 11th. Invite your friends. Post it to Facebook, Twitter, a note on your door. Speak out and speak up. You can also email the City Council from SaveWaterSaveMoney.org.