Massachusetts officials are scheduled to unveil a new framework Thursday to allocate water from streams and rivers, a long-awaited plan that aims to prevent waterways from running dry but could translate into higher water rates and more bans on lawn watering.
The new guidelines are expected to require communities to work harder to fix leaky pipes and inject water back into the ground that is taken out for drinking, showering, and gardening. While final rules are expected by the end of next year, the new regulations will not begin to be phased in until 2014 and will continue through 2019, as water withdrawal permits come up for renewal.
Comments
Our entire infrastructure needs some serious attention. I wish the natural gas lines were also being looked at.
Watering the lawn is almost sinful.
There's a very scary article in NewsWeek by David Cay Johnson that outlines how desperately in need of repairs our entire infrastructure is. So much of the damage caused by Sandy could have been prevented.
Why are people with wells allowed to water during a ban? This stals water from the town water table.
Watering lawns is bad, but there ought to be an exemption for watering food gardens and other edibles. Watering those is actually environmentally helpful in that it cuts energy use, air pollution, and other woes caused by importing food from outside the local area.
Not everybody watering outside is doing so purely for aesthetic use. A bit of water dumped on one's local veggies could be saving untold waterway and other environmental damage in Iowa or in North Dakota for that matter, obtaining water to obtain fracked crude oil to obtain diesel to ship your carrots from 15 states away.
I actually use mulches and other means to get away with only using a little water on the edibles, but still, some water can be needed, especially when starting direct-seeded crops. It's funny how here in MA, agricultural use of water isn't even mentioned.
I guess people think we all work in some glass-walled office building in Burlington.
Come to think of it, if we wanted to save water, we'd rip down all those office parks constructed on good farm and forest land all along Rt 128 in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Untold damage was done to aquifiers and hydrological recharge rates by all that pavement, never mind the running the road itself, right by several major reservoirs.
This comment has been removed.
Fabulous new for Massachusetts and the water supply across the globe. It's a shame that lawns are being watered when streams are running dry.