Johnfromokc
Active Member
Have any in your community? We are in a continuing drought in Oklahoma, as is much of the country. Everyone is aware of this - it's no secret. We have had more days over 100 degrees F than I've ever seen outside of the southwestern U.S. deserts.
I've been concerned about water conservation ever since I was stationed at Twentynine Palms California in the Mojave Desert from 1983 to 1985. They used sewer water for any irrigation on the base. But here in Oklahoma City, that gets nearly all of its water from the underground aquifers, people water lawns and fill land locked ponds 24/7. Unfucking believable.
It is well known that our aquifer is under tremendous strain, yet these people refuse to conserve water in any meaningful manner. Who knows how long it took to charge our aquifers with water. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions of years? There is no doubt we are pumping water from the ground much faster than it trickeled into it.
Here are some glaring examples of water wasting in my neighborhood. Everyone has 5 or more acres of land, and it is mostly wooded. The neighbor beside me has a land locked pond - meaning it has no source of water from a spring or creek. Two other neighbors also have land locked ponds. All were filling their ponds with well water pumped from the ground. Most have stopped, but one or two continue to fill these ponds despite the drought conditions. When we moved here, the lot next door was vacant, but the land owner ran the well pump 24/7 to keep this land locked pond filled. To give you an idea how much water this is, look at the following figures:
The typical residental well pump has a pumping capacity of 15 gallons per minute (GPM). There are 60 minutes in each hour, so every hour the pump runs equals 900 gallons of water. With 24 hours in a day, those 900 gallons per hours equal 21,600 gallons of ground water. With 365 days in a year, that land locked pond owner is wasting 7,884,000 annually. Even if they only pumped 25% of the time, that is still nearly 2,000,000 gallons of ground water wasted.
A couple of our pond filling neighbors well's went dry. One saw the light and stopped pumping well water into the pond, and the other was outraged because the well drillers are backed up into December and won't be able to drill a new well for him until then. He is trying to refinance his 4000 + square foot house so he will save $3,300 per year on his mortgage, and he is afraid if he can't keep his pond filled, the appraisal will come in too low. WTF? This is a 50-something year old couple - empty nesters - kids long gone. They own a mortgage brokerage - Ironic no?
Multiply that times all the land locked aesthetic pond fillers in Oklahoma City and we are wasting billions of gallons of water. I hate to even think about all the golf courses and other lawn waterers out there pumping water from our aquifers to evaporate on the surface.
With current water use laws, we can't do a damned thing about it either. So much for people doing the right thing without government regulation.
I've been concerned about water conservation ever since I was stationed at Twentynine Palms California in the Mojave Desert from 1983 to 1985. They used sewer water for any irrigation on the base. But here in Oklahoma City, that gets nearly all of its water from the underground aquifers, people water lawns and fill land locked ponds 24/7. Unfucking believable.
It is well known that our aquifer is under tremendous strain, yet these people refuse to conserve water in any meaningful manner. Who knows how long it took to charge our aquifers with water. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions of years? There is no doubt we are pumping water from the ground much faster than it trickeled into it.
Here are some glaring examples of water wasting in my neighborhood. Everyone has 5 or more acres of land, and it is mostly wooded. The neighbor beside me has a land locked pond - meaning it has no source of water from a spring or creek. Two other neighbors also have land locked ponds. All were filling their ponds with well water pumped from the ground. Most have stopped, but one or two continue to fill these ponds despite the drought conditions. When we moved here, the lot next door was vacant, but the land owner ran the well pump 24/7 to keep this land locked pond filled. To give you an idea how much water this is, look at the following figures:
The typical residental well pump has a pumping capacity of 15 gallons per minute (GPM). There are 60 minutes in each hour, so every hour the pump runs equals 900 gallons of water. With 24 hours in a day, those 900 gallons per hours equal 21,600 gallons of ground water. With 365 days in a year, that land locked pond owner is wasting 7,884,000 annually. Even if they only pumped 25% of the time, that is still nearly 2,000,000 gallons of ground water wasted.
A couple of our pond filling neighbors well's went dry. One saw the light and stopped pumping well water into the pond, and the other was outraged because the well drillers are backed up into December and won't be able to drill a new well for him until then. He is trying to refinance his 4000 + square foot house so he will save $3,300 per year on his mortgage, and he is afraid if he can't keep his pond filled, the appraisal will come in too low. WTF? This is a 50-something year old couple - empty nesters - kids long gone. They own a mortgage brokerage - Ironic no?
Multiply that times all the land locked aesthetic pond fillers in Oklahoma City and we are wasting billions of gallons of water. I hate to even think about all the golf courses and other lawn waterers out there pumping water from our aquifers to evaporate on the surface.
With current water use laws, we can't do a damned thing about it either. So much for people doing the right thing without government regulation.
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