On Tuesday this week, a water main broke at one of the biggest reservoirs serving our area. We were originally on a water restriction that has now been replaced with a ban. Our city still has tap water but a lot of the smaller towns right around us don’t even have that.

According to our local media, our city uses on average 140 million liters of water per day (about 40 million gallons) but yesterday, our city used 200 million liters (about 53 million gallons). People were seen watering their lawns, washing their driveways and running sprinklers for their children.

Most people in my area do not have a water storage and now a lot of grocery stores are low or out of bottled water.  We haven’t had a water ban since 1998.We are surrounded by the Great Lakes so who would think you would need it, I guess is what most people think. BUT:

– this past weekend was Victoria Day, a long weekend that has long been the ‘safe point’ to start your gardening in our area. Many people that participated in the water ban now have dead plants because they don’t have a rain barrel or don’t use their grey water.

– the next town over has no tap water so no showers, no drinking water, no dishwasher and so on. Do you have enough water stored for at least three days of drinking, watering your veggie garden and  giving to your pets?

The weather was 30*C  (86 F ) yesterday and muggy, I can understand people want to cool down. Here’s a few ideas (based on what I saw in my neighborhood and on social media) for water conservation.

Instead of filling the pool or running the sprinkler for the kids, give them a popsicle, they’ll love you for it!

Stay indoors between the hours of 11-3 when the sun is at its hottest.

As a lesser evil, turn on your air conditioning unit rather than leaving water running.

Take a shorter shower (or use the dry shampoo recipe I gave a few posts ago)

Use paper plates or eat out of the pots that you cook in.

When you shower, leave the plug in and collect the water for use in your garden (grey water)

Buy (or make) a rain barrel (this one is similar to the one I own)

Don’t water your lawn, it will make it grow and then you have to cut it!

Moral of the story: you should probably have some cases of bottled water put aside for drinking and a rain barrel or grey water system (or both!) for your veggies.