Pasadena declared a one-week moratorium on landscape watering the last week of February. This was a one-time event to repair infrastructure. But it serves as a reminder of our dependence on available-on-demand access to water. The idea that we can turn on a tap and receive an endless supply of potable water is a modern luxury. Ready access has allowed us to become wasteful and complacent about our most precious resource. Water is life, pure and simple.
We have essentially negated the possibility of regenerative, natural hydrological cycles and systems with our increasingly paved and degraded urban landscape. We currently treat rain as an unwanted guest, that should be drained away through pipes and conduits as quickly and efficiently as possible. Water policy has become a drainage issue rather than a conservation issue. This fundamental disconnect from our most basic resource is not sustainable at any level. We must break this pattern, in order to heal our landscapes and ourselves.
How do we invite water back into our environment and our lives?
We have essentially negated the possibility of regenerative, natural hydrological cycles and systems with our increasingly paved and degraded urban landscape. We currently treat rain as an unwanted guest, that should be drained away through pipes and conduits as quickly and efficiently as possible. Water policy has become a drainage issue rather than a conservation issue. This fundamental disconnect from our most basic resource is not sustainable at any level. We must break this pattern, in order to heal our landscapes and ourselves.
How do we invite water back into our environment and our lives?