In California, Stingy Water Users Are Fined in Drought, While the Rich Soak
APPLE VALLEY, Calif. — Outside her two-story tract home in this working-class town, Debbie Alberts, a part-time food service worker, has torn out most of the lawn. She has given up daily showers and cut her family’s water use nearly in half, to just 178 gallons per person each day.
A little more than 100 miles west, a resident of the fashionable Los Angeles hills has been labeled “the Wet Prince of Bel Air” after drinking up more than 30,000 gallons of water each day — the equivalent of 400 toilet flushes each hour with two showers running constantly, with enough water left over to keep the lawn perfectly green.
Only one of them has been fined for excessive water use: Ms. Alberts.
Luis Uribe, an owner of a landscaping company, spreading decomposed granite on a yard in Culver City. J.S. Gilbert at his home in South San Francisco, where he installed a low-flow toilet after a friend repeatedly told him that he needed to replace his old one because it used too much water.
Four years into the worst drought in California’s recorded history, the contrast between the strict enforcement on Californians struggling to conserve and the unchecked profligacy in places like Bel Air has unleashed anger and indignation — among both the recipients of the fines, who feel helpless to avoid them, and other Californians who see the biggest water hogs getting off scot-free.
The top 10 residential water users in Los Angeles collectively used more than 80 million gallons of water in the year that ended April 1. The “Wet Prince” topped the list at 11.8 million gallons during that time — enough for about 90 typical California families — at an estimated cost of $90,000, as first reported by the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/stingy-water-users-in-fined-in-drought-while-the-rich-soak.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
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