dimland radio 4-4-15 no show show notes

The Show Is On Hiatus

The laptop still needs to be replaced, so the show is still on hiatus.

But, that doesn't mean I can't cover a topic I would have talked about on the show, does it? Of course, not. So, here are this week's no show show notes...

Unfair Water Restrictions in California

 

Somebody didn't do their math.

The above graphic popped up on Facebook this week in response to Gov. Jerry Brown's strong measures put into action to deal with the lengthy drought California has been facing. I'm not sure why almond farmers were included, we like farmers, don't we? But everybody hates fracking so that inclusion makes perfect sense. Get that evil fracking in there! It's evil! (Ok, I know there are some legitimate concerns with fracking, but still.)

Nestle is one of those evil for profit corporations and we hate corporations in America, right? Besides, bottle water is over priced and, in most cases, municipal tap water is the better option, but what is done with bottled water? People drink it and then they pee it out. The pee goes in the sewage system and then gets cleaned, filtered, treated, and goes back into the drinking water supply. Kinda gross when you think about it, but that's how it goes.

All right. When I saw this image the first thing I thought was: How many people live in California and how often do they flush a toilet each day?

Time to research!

I am proceeding on the assumption that the numbers given in the graphic are accurate. That said, I was able to confirm the 1.6 gallon per flush number.

According to Google the population of CA is 38.8 million. The number of times a person, on average, flushes a toilet a day is five times. So, taking the 1.6 gallons per flush number, which is on the low end as older toilets can flush as much as eight gallons in a single use (the flushes per person per day and the gallons per flush numbers came from here), and multiplying that by five we get an average of eight gallons flushed per person per day. 

Eight times 38.8 million comes to 310,400,000 gallons flushed in California per day. That's vastly more water used in one day than fracking in an entire year and more than three quarters as much as Nestle will bottle in a year. 

By my math, the amount flushed in a year comes to, and this is likely to be lower than actually use, 113,296,000,000 gallons. Way, way more than fracking and Nestle's bottled water. So, it makes sense to restrict toilet flushing, doesn't it? 

Now, if you want to give up farming almonds, I amenable to that.