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Many of my friends here, like me, live in old houses that were erected back when plumbing and electricity were novelties. You get the idea that, around the turn of the century, there was a domestic conversation:
Clara, we've managed to set aside a little of your
egg money. Reckon we ought to try some of that new-fangled
electricity stuff? An' mebbe an indoor flush toilet,
too?
Well, Jake, it's up to you. But for my part, trimming
and filling those coal-oil lamps can get mighty tedious,
and our privy is in sore need of an overhaul
anyway.
And so they tacked on a lean-to addition for an experiment with progress; over the years, the pipes and wires extended ever further into the house.
So you'd think that new construction would accomodate
these utilities more comfortably, but that wasn't the case
when I visited a contractor friend in his brand-new house.
(He's been in it nearly six months now, thereby breaking
the world's record for contractor living in a house of
his own construction.
Ususally they get one sold before
they even start packing to move in.)
The need arose to visit the commode, where, to put it delicately, certain matter stayed around after it should have departed. I discretely mentioned this.
Damn new water-saving toilets,
he explained.
The feds outlawed the manufacture and import of the old
3.5-gallon toilets, so we're stuck with these 1.6-gallon
tanks that you have to flush about five times.
This works out to eight gallons per visit, we figured, and thus the new water-saver resulted in twice the consumption of the old water-waster it replaced.
Even if these contraptions worked properly, though, just how much water would they save?
In an average year, about 100 million acre-feet of water falls on Colorado. Of that 85 million evaporates or is transpired by plants, leaving 15 million to flow in our streams. About 8 million of that flows to downstream domains, mostly as required by interstate water compacts, leaving 7 million for in-state consumption.
Of that, 88 percent is used by agriculture, 6 percent by industry, and the remaining 6 percent goes to municipal or domestic purposes. So, of the 100 million acre feet (32.5 trillion gallons) we started with, we're down to 6 percent of 7 percent (0.42 percent or 136.9 billion gallons) for all household use.
At an average home, 54 percent goes to the yard and 18 percent for showers and baths, 1 percent to the dishwasher, 2 percent to leaks, and faucets and laundry each take 7 percent. The remaining 11 percent flows through the toilet.
In other words, all the toilets in Colorado consume 15 billion gallons a year, or only 0.03 percent of the water in the state. If we eliminated flush toilets entirely, it wouldn't make much difference, and even if low-flow fixtures worked properly, the savings aren't enough to matter, even in a desert like Colorado.
The trend is going the other way, though. Custer County just announced it plans to eliminate all traditional no-water-consumption-at-all privies by the end of this year.
They're still allowed, but only in rare special cases, in Saguache County, which has been getting suspiously civilized of late. Just last week I got hustled into attending a chamber-music performance there -- harpsichord and viola da gamba -- and to my shock I enjoyed it.
(I'm hoping this forthright confession will keep me from getting thrown out of the Regular Guy Association, which can be brutal. They come by and confiscate all your gimme caps, beef jerky and grease-stained low-hanger moon-is-rising blue jeans. Then they break your left kneecap so you can never again double-clutch when downshifting a five-speed crashbox.)
Anyway, it appears that replacing low-flows that don't flush with privies that don't need to flush is not the wave of the future.
But there's another possible solution. Colorado toilets altogether consume the same amount of water as 126,000 people -- the approximate population of Douglas County.
Rounding them up and deporting them would solve many problems, aside from allowing the rest of us to use flush toilets that actually flush.
Open space would be preserved between Colorado's two largest cities. The departure of all those commuters would reduce the need for new highway construction and expansion, so we wouldn't need that gas tax increase now being touted by the Asphalt & Gravel Lobby.
Our future would be more secure if we didn't have thousands of people relying on wells that will go dry within a century, and our politics would be more competitive without the solid GOP bloc of Douglas County.
Since we may have to endure an election this fall anyway, let's put the question on the ballot: Given that Colorado is supposed to limit its water usage, do you want people in Douglas County, or a toilet that flushes?
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