Your Letters

Conserve, Conserve

Jim Wood (POV, May), we have been experiencing, on average, warmer than usual daytime temperatures these last few months, and according to climatologists, this will likely continue. Has the water district figured this increase in surface evaporation into its projected two-and-a-half-year water supply estimates? We don’t know how long this drought is going to last, so it’s crucial for all of us in Marin to be as proactive as the rest of California when it comes to conserving our precious water resources. Hopefully, folks have already been conserving. BRIAN CULLINANE, VIA EMAIL

Thank you for what was, ultimately, a balanced editorial on water use in Marin County, underlining good reasons to be conservative with water. However, I fear the title, “Above Water,” along with the suggestion that the county is “blessed,” might well give residents of our county a false sense of safety. Sadly, it also perpetrates an “us and them” view of the broader water challenges facing our state — we may well have enviable reservoirs, but an encroaching sense of entitlement here in the county could be the undoing of us. All California residents, regardless of their community’s current drought status, should decide whether they are going to be part of the solution or part of the problem. The drought in California threatens both environmental and economic ruin for the state, and the idea that we are indeed “above water” is misplaced — venturing just an hour north or east takes us into the zone of exceptional drought. Our reservoirs may be almost full at 94 percent, but what might happen next is the wild card — a predicted 30-year drought, the possibility of mandatory donation of water to more moisture-strapped California cities, evaporation and overuse of water resources. That wild card could take us into a completely different game. JACQUELINE WINSPEAR, VIA EMAIL


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