Water Conservation/Ice Bucket Challenge PSA (Los Angeles: homes, living in, estimates)

[Geo-Aggie]

I see people doing ice bucket things all drought-friendly-like, and while I appreciate that, if you want to help the water table, you can do better.

Let's say a "bucket" is 5 gallons, there are 72 million people living in the Western USA and each one is going to waste 5 gallons of water and donate to charity. This is 360 million gallons of water, or 1,100 acre-feet.

According to current estimates the Western USA is about 194,000,000 acre-feet of water short of "normal."

There are approximately 1.6 million detached-homes in Los Angeles County, alone. An average (5,000 sq.ft.) lawn uses 625 gallons of water for each watering session for a total of 1 billion gallons or 3,000 acre-feet, per watering session.

If each person in Los Angeles County alone were to skip watering their grass just once, in the whole year, that would exceed the amount of water used by every person in the whole Western USA dumping a 5 gallon bucket of water on their heads, threefold (and let's face it, there's no way every person in the Western-US is dumping a 5 gallon bucket of water on their heads - though for that matter I'm pretty sure there are plenty of Los Angelenos who never water their lawns, ever..)

So.. if you really want to fight drought, don't water your grass so much. Go ahead and dump a bucket of water on your head though, especially if it means you're going to donate to charity! (maybe go do it over the dead spot in your lawn?)

[ambient]

I wish all this ice bucket nonsense would end already.

Some Hollywood celebrity twit picks a pet cause for PR purposes and does some gimmicky thing on social media, and suddenly we have every attention ***** and their grandmother on Twitter and wherever else imitating this nonsense like apes.

"Ohh look at ME, everyone! I am so generous and care SO much about ALS, this is not about me... but look at me, lookie lookie lookie what I'm doing! Pls 'like' me and follow me?"

If you were really that generous, you would already regularly cut checks for meaningful chunks of your money to good causes and volunteer your time without the need to incessantly broadcast it.

[bradlywhite]

Yes! I see this a lot, people complaining that we are in a drought, the ALS Challenge uses water. I also see the above complaint a lot too. So in the grand scheme of things, the ALS challenge is not going to put us into water jeopardy, and this challenge has been the cause of millions of dollars raised to research cures. The only valid complaint I can see is the foundation use of funds to study aborted babies stem cells. To solve this, you can specify your donation does not go to this particular study...

[DMenscha]

So, pour it over your head while you're standing on your lawn or some other place that can use the water.

[bigdumbgod]

It would be a more impressive challenge, and more sensational, if the participants would pour something other than water over their heads.