Antone's Nightclub
Water Use Goals a Joke
RECEIVED Tue., March 25, 2008
Dear Editor,
How is it Wells Dunbar can write, with a straight face, that incumbent Council Member Lee Leffingwell has been a “strong advocate for water conservation” and point to Leffingwell’s “green bona fides” as the “architect of redrafting the Save Our Springs Ordinance” [“Spring Training,” News, March 21]? Leffingwell set a goal of reducing Austin water use 1% per year for 10 years. That’s not a goal; that’s falling out of bed.
Only it gets worse. The starting point for this “goal” is our single most wasteful day of water-use ever recorded. And the goal is not really a reduction – it’s a reduction off of projected increasing “peak day” water demands. And “to be safe,” city staff is only planning a half-percent-per-year reduction.
This joke would be funny if it weren’t so cruel and costly. Setting such a low bar leaves Leffingwell and council racing to build the new $400 million Water Treatment Plant No. 4, which we will pay for with at least a 15% rate hike and decades more of water waste that will drain Lake Travis. Our water waste means our neighbors to the south will feel perfectly comfortable doing the same, pumping Barton Springs dry during times of drought.
As for Leffingwell’s green mala fides, the point of his SOS Ordinance amendment was to increase development in the Barton Springs Watershed (as if we don’t have enough already). The amendment was rigorously opposed by the Austin Sierra Club, Save Barton Creek Association, and Save Our Springs Alliance.
Strong and bona or lame and mala? Perhaps a few facts, and let the reader decide.
How is it Wells Dunbar can write, with a straight face, that incumbent Council Member Lee Leffingwell has been a “strong advocate for water conservation” and point to Leffingwell’s “green bona fides” as the “architect of redrafting the Save Our Springs Ordinance” [“Spring Training,” News, March 21]? Leffingwell set a goal of reducing Austin water use 1% per year for 10 years. That’s not a goal; that’s falling out of bed.
Only it gets worse. The starting point for this “goal” is our single most wasteful day of water-use ever recorded. And the goal is not really a reduction – it’s a reduction off of projected increasing “peak day” water demands. And “to be safe,” city staff is only planning a half-percent-per-year reduction.
This joke would be funny if it weren’t so cruel and costly. Setting such a low bar leaves Leffingwell and council racing to build the new $400 million Water Treatment Plant No. 4, which we will pay for with at least a 15% rate hike and decades more of water waste that will drain Lake Travis. Our water waste means our neighbors to the south will feel perfectly comfortable doing the same, pumping Barton Springs dry during times of drought.
As for Leffingwell’s green mala fides, the point of his SOS Ordinance amendment was to increase development in the Barton Springs Watershed (as if we don’t have enough already). The amendment was rigorously opposed by the Austin Sierra Club, Save Barton Creek Association, and Save Our Springs Alliance.
Strong and bona or lame and mala? Perhaps a few facts, and let the reader decide.
Bill Bunch