Managing Water!!

Onto to my green pursuits, or "viable and sustainable" enterprises. Read an article in the latest National Geographic magazine - "Drying of the West". Talks about how the American West was created with the waters of the Colorado serving 7 states from Utah to California. Seems the "wet" period of the 20th century are over and the Colorado, Lake Mead and others are drying up. Time for everybody to wake up - from Australia, India, Europe through the US!! Use water sparingly. Apply green principles and plain viable business principles to treat water as a resource that needs to be paid for like gasoline. Here are some startling facts from the article:

• Phoenix gets its water from 336 miles (500+ km) through a canal. Will the private sector ever do this in any of their businesses? Wont it be declared a unviable project before it starts.
• Owens Lake outside of Los Angeles became a wasteland when the river that fed it was diverted in 1913 to quench the thirst of LA residents
• Golf Courses - in the Mojave desert region take up 8% of the regions water! Creating lawns, greens, fairways where only hardy desert plants normally survive

Some actions are being taken, Las Vegas has prohibited new front lawns, limited the size of back ones, offers people $2 per sq. ft. to tear down existing ones and replace them with desert plants. However, take a look at any aerial photos of Phoenix or any other US cities and you'll see that most suburban homes have swimming pools that are used maybe a total of 100 hours in a year by 1.5 people each!

Whilst, India has huge other problems of "water distribution" where there is no water in homes 20 kms away from areas such as the Western Ghats that get the highest rainfall in the world and they need to be fixed, we need to be careful. Frugal use of water and "sustainable" projects where water needs to be paid for like any other properly valued resource like oil, is the need of the hour. Lets get used to seeing forests and trees that follow the seasons and go from green to brown to green as "greenery" and not vast expanses of lawns that are artifically kept green without paying much for the water that is used to keep them so.

This is not just a call by a NGO that talks of global warming but true democratization of business and making people/businesses pay for what they use, something that we all agree the Economic Reforms in India made possible - providing a "level playing field and getting away from subsidies"