Water, water, water.

This is in other places on this website, but watch: an acre foot of water is an acre one foot high in water.

The Plaza is 8.5 acres.

So the Plaza one foot high in water is 8.5 acre feet.

And it rains about 2 and a half feet of rain a winter,
so the Plaza gets 21.25 acre feet of water a year.

How much is that? An acre foot of water is about a third of a million gallons.

So, the Plaza gets SEVEN MILLION GALLONS OF WATER A WINTER?

Are we conserving that, being conservatives in the real meaning of the word?

No.

Can we?

Yes.

Do I want to bring nature into all our decisions? Yes.


One more water fact:
the City (all of us users combined) uses 700 million gallons of water a year.

Lots.

Let's create a program to pay people to take out front lawns
and put in drought tolerant gardens.

Yeah.


And, finally, how to calculate the rainfall on your rooftop?

Take the square feet and multiply by 2.5 feet of rain per winter for the cubic feet of water.

E.g. 2000 sq. ft. roof, means 5000 cubic feet of water.

Take that times 7.5 gallons of water per cubic foot.

So, for our example, 5000 X 7.5 = 27,500 gallons of water per winter.

What to do with that, or the seven million falling on the Plaza?

Dig dry wells, pour it down in during the winter, let it percolate back up in the summer when we need it.

Or, for houses, cisterns, even.

Let's start thinking about this precious rain, each winter's gift that we shove so heedlessly down our storm drains.