Drought Measures

It’s been proven that “gamefying,” even serious stuff, will make it more alluring and effective. Seems we all need to be entertained to have the incentive to do pretty much ANYTHING.

You may know by now that it hasn’t rained in Sonoma County in about 60 years. There are tales about the last time it rained. Kennedy was president and the Beatles had just passed through SFO. Legend has it that Ringo looked north and uttered, “I don’t believe I’ve seen a cloud in the sky the whole time we’ve been in America.” And then the rains came. (There’s a Beatles’ song about it.)

Fast forward to 2021 and it’s dry as dirt here in Santa Rosa. I was in denial about the drought when I bought my house here in March. Wildfires? I trimmed my trees and hardened my landscaping. Sky-high COVID rate? We masked-up, kept our distance and got vaccinated.. Trump people? They can kiss my ass. But when the rain doesn’t fall, there is absolutely NOTHING I can do about it.

It’s so bad now that you can kind of hear a sucking sound when you open the windows. That’s the sound of water receding from Lake Sonoma, the source of all drinkable water for my new hometown.

Santa Rosa Water, the local water company, is doing their bit by feeding us reality sandwiches about how bad this could get. Last month they asked if we would kindly try to cool it with the long showers and hosing off the driveway with drinking water. Crickets. This month they’re asking us to please save 20 percent off of however much water we used last month. They even launched a tool to help us monitor our water usage. The tool is wonderful and exciting. It’s practically “gamefied.”

The water usage tool showed me that my outmoded drip irrigation system (the main reason I have any living plants in my front yard) has been invisibly dumping hundreds of gallons of precious water beneath the surface of my yard every day. My plants have been thriving and my gophers are sparkling clean and well hydrated, but for all the wrong reasons. This had to stop.

Two days ago I turned off the drip irrigation system and watered what needs to be watered MANUALLY. I went from using 120 gallons of water a day to 40. That’s still a lot, and I plan to do better, but the sucking sound from Lake Sonoma is just a wee bit less pronounced today.