E-mail Sherry Listgarten About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving a...  (More) About this blog: Climate change, despite its outsized impact on the planet, is still an abstract concept to many of us. That needs to change. My hope is that readers of this blog will develop a better understanding of how our climate is evolving and how they want to respond, and will feel comfortable asking questions and exchanging comments on the topic. It is important that we develop a shared understanding of the basic science and impacts of climate change, to make sense of our actions and policy options going forward. My background is not in climate science, and I'm not even particularly green; my hope is that helps to make this blog more relatable. I studied math and neurobiology on the east coast before moving out here in 1987 for grad school in computer science. After working in the tech industry for about 25 years, I retired a few years ago to better align my time with my priorities. I love spending time outdoors, and feel deeply our responsibility to this incredible planet that we call home.  (Hide)

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We save water by picking up free recycled water in Contra Costa County. It keeps our lawns and drought tolerant plants happy. Dead lawns are depressing.

Last billing period (April 21-May 19) we used an average of 82 cubic feet a day with three people in the house. Our lot is 2300 square feet and we have been using less than required in previous drought restrictions by watering outside twice a week, showering twice a week, laundry twice a week and rarely using the dishwasher. The big use of water is keeping our pool filled and we don't know what we can do about that given it is kidney shaped and hard to cover. Peter

Last year we took out most of our lawn and replaced it with drought tolerant plants. As a result we use about 60% less water this year.

@Ronen, that is an incredible improvement you made in water use! I'd love to hear more about the process of taking out your lawn. How did that work? Also, if you have before/after photos that you want to share, you can email them to me and I'd be happy to post them. @Jennifer, thanks for the comment! What does it mean to pick up recycled water? Do you bring a bunch of big containers, fill them up, lug them out of your car, then fill up watering cans so you can hand water? (Also, where do you get the water?) @PeterB, thanks, that is really interesting about pool evaporation. I wonder if another reader will have a suggestion... BTW, a reader suggested that I include a link to this article on how to read your water meter. It has some great information, including how to check for leaks. These are all really interesting and helpful comments, thank you!

I use Purple Pipe Company which has recycled water.

Thank you so much for sharing this data. I think it's an important part of helping people understand water usage. I'm sort of the opposite of you. I don't think about my water usage very much at all. We replaced a low-flow shower head with a high-flow one some years back, for example. Our family of four uses 3.75 CCF/mo, averaged over a year. The secret is that we live in dense multifamily housing. If you don't have landscaping, nothing else matters: you use less than people who do. As a housing activist, I often hear people argue against dense housing with "but where will we get the water?" The reality is increasing density replaces high-water landscaping with low-water multifamily. Building multifamily in Palo Alto also prevents displacing housing development into exurban, landscaping-intensive areas (with higher climate/traffic/wildfire impacts.) I can't quickly find it now, but I found some time back that average use in our area is 11 or 12 CCF/mo. That's mixing up single-family and multi-family, so it doesn't tell you much about the difference. I suspect the gap between average SF and MF is more like 12-16 CCF, or enough to provision 3-4 homes. The point I'd make here is that homeowners concerned about high water bills should favor more high-density development in Palo Alto. It vastly reduces competition for water, relative to displacing the housing out to Gilroy and Stockton.

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