Mayors of 29 Great Lakes cities vow to cut water consumption

[Scout]

Great Lakes states and Canada are already trying to conserve out water ... so no, we aren't really interested in sharing it!

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What's a Friday without some toilet talk? The mayors of 29 Canadian and U.S. cities in the Great Lakes region have agreed to cut water consumption 15 percent from 2000 levels by 2015, and one of their solutions is banning inefficient potties. "We need provincial legislation about low-flow toilets," said Toronto Mayor David Miller yesterday at a meeting of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. "They need to be mandatory in home renovations." The cities -- including other big guns like Montreal, Chicago, Hamilton, Ont., and Buffalo, N.Y. -- also passed a resolution calling for a revolving loan fund to help fix leaky public water systems, and compared notes on conservation plans that 11 of them already have in place. "We are all under pressure to reduce greenhouse gases generated by ," said Miller, whose city has exceeded its water-conservation goals. "And the silver lining is that municipalities save money through water conservation." Imagine that.

straight to the source: Journal Times, David Steinkraus, 13 Jul 2007
straight to the source: Canada.com, CanWest News Service, 13 Jul 2007
straight to the source: Forbes, Associated Press, 12 Jul 2007
straight to the source: The Star, Catherine Porter, 13 Jul 2007

[CrispyQ]

1. What about the acres & acres of business park lawn.

I don't know about the Great Lakes area, but in semi-arrid Colorado, we waste millions of gallons watering business park lawns -- lawns that no one ever uses. And many of them water these lawns between noon & 4pm. Arghh!

[madrchsod]

2. same here

the suburbs are alive with sprinklers.even though we have been getting plenty of rain, it`s sprinklers to make sure there`s not a spot of brown. there`s a lot of ways here to cut down on water consumption in the midwestern suburbs...the first way is stop selling ground water to the baby water bottle crowd. one dollars plus for bottled water? and people bitch about the price of gasoline!

[CrispyQ]

3. Xeriscaping is a wonderful alternative to non-indigenous lawns & foliage,

but usually costs more upfront. Sadly, all we seem to care about is the bottom line for the this quarter or next quarter. But beyond that, Wall Street/investors doesn't/don't give a shit.