
In Bel-Air, someone is using 1,300 gallons of water per hour - a3voices
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1007-lopez-water-glutton-20151007-column.html
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bradleybuda
This is disturbing; the journalist is advocating the outing/doxxing of a
private citizen who is breaking _no laws whatsoever_ (at least as far as I can
tell from the story). In the internet bully culture we have, that's incredibly
irresponsible.

If there's something wrong with an individual using so much water (and there
may very well be), then the right response is to change the laws, regulations,
or rates to charge more or even to prohibit said water use; not to shame an
individual who is acting legally within the system.

~~~
cperciva
I agree. After all, it's not as if this property owner isn't paying for the
extravagant water usage.

And if you think that $90,000/year isn't enough to reimburse society for this
water usage... raise the damn prices. And if you think raising water rates
would unfairly hurt the poor... take the increased revenue and hand it out as
a per-capita water tax rebate.

~~~
swalsh
"it's not as if this property owner isn't paying for the extravagant water
usage."

That's kind of the problem though, he isn't. Water is notoriously subsidized.
It's hard to make the case that 12 million gallons of clean water would only
cost $90k. The system kind of has built into it this spirit of "everyone needs
clean affordable water". There was no limit put in place, so there's some
people taking crazy advantage of it.

~~~
irixusr
Agreed, which is hardly his/her fault, but rather California/LA politics'
fault.

Raise prices, or put a multi-tier pricing, or whatever; but harassment for
social engineering's sake is creepy.

~~~
chucknelson
Agree that harassment isn't the way to go about this, but I think we can put a
good amount of blame on the individual here - selfish water usage doesn't seem
like a great idea in California.

~~~
irixusr
See my post bellow estimating how large their lot should be assuming golf-
course irrigation. I came with ~5 acres

This individual is a jerk, no doubt, but 5 acres is small, so their overall
usage compared to the total for LA county isn't very significant. LA county as
a whole is abusing water.

I'd suggest a tiered pricing scheme. Current rates for water usage bellow what
99.9% of what the LA uses (to make it politically expedient), and two orders
of magnitude larger otherwise.

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ctdonath
A few years back, Atlanta faced a serious drought (the two lakes it lives on
nearly dried up). Some mansion was discovered to be running a seriously large
decorative fountain - _without_ recirculating the water (yes, it came in, got
tossed in the air, then flushed down the drain) and wasting water on par with
the above article; once published, the public outcry was deafening and
recirculation pipes soon added.

~~~
rsanders
Driving through some of the more mansion-laden neighborhoods (Buckhead on e.g.
Habersham Drive), you'll see signs near the curb saying things like
"IRRIGATION WATER DRAWN FROM WELL". I presume those were meant to discourage
torches & pitchforks.

I'm not sure the distinction is all that meaningful.

~~~
jessaustin
You wouldn't expect many wells in big cities, would you? Assuming that to be
the case, an occasional well isn't going to hurt the water table.

~~~
waterlesscloud
That part of the city was originally country homes for the city's wealthy folk
back in the 19th century. So I'm sure a lot of wells were struck back in those
days, probably modernized over time. The estates were big, though, so not a
lot of wells-per-acre.

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drdaeman
Since not everyone is familiar with customary metric system, I guess I'll
leave this comment to save some time searching or doing math.

1300 US gallons ≈ 4931 liters

~~~
joepvd
Thanks, but that leaves doubt whether you wrote a decimal or thousands
separator.

It is close to 5000 liters.

~~~
strictnein
An honest question: Do the regions that use a comma for a decimal separator
still call it a decimal point?

~~~
gambiting
Poland here - yep. We call it "punkt dziesiętny" which literally translates to
"decimal point",even though we use a comma.

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irixusr
Can this be true (1300 gal/hour is 5m^3/hour 24/7.)? At first I thought it was
impossible. They I crunched some numbers...

I don't think this is within the domicile. It _must_ be for irrigation. So
let's estimate how large the lot would have to be.

Bel-air is [google] 2.9 sq mi, or 1880 acres. A golf course [1](in Iowa, first
example I found) uses on average 233 gal/acrehour on their worst month. So
1300 gal/hour is a lot size of 1300/233 = 5.3 acres. This is an upper bound
[2]

5.3 acres? That's not necessarily a large lot! Especially if it's for the
_largest_ of all lots!

[1]
[http://news.cybergolf.com/golf_news/johnny_walker_asks_how_m...](http://news.cybergolf.com/golf_news/johnny_walker_asks_how_much_water_does_a_golf_course_use_for_irrigation)

[2] Note that the numbers I used are specifically assuming a certain amount of
rainfall, which California doesn't have. I'm too lazy to use the numbers given
in the article to have a better estimate, but I used "conservative" numbers so
the lot size is an upper bound

~~~
abduhl
This is aggressively conservative. The evapotranspiration rate in California
is 2x - 3x that of Iowa and the average rainfall is likely close to 0 inches
in LA of which almost none is usable for landscape purposes. I would not be
surprised if this much water is needed for a 2 acre or smaller sized lawn.

~~~
nkurz
_the average rainfall is likely close to 0 inches in LA of which almost none
is usable for landscape purposes_

The average rainfall is Los Angeles is 15 inches per year. Why do you say this
is "close to 0"?

 _I would not be surprised if this much water is needed for a 2 acre or
smaller sized lawn._

1300 gallons/hour * 24 hours * 365 days/year = 35 acre feet / year.

[https://www.google.com/search?&q=1300+*+24+*+365+gallons+in+...](https://www.google.com/search?&q=1300+*+24+*+365+gallons+in+acre+feet)

 _I_ would be surprised if someone was putting 15 feet of water per year on a
lawn! For comparison, the average Southern California golf courses about 3
acre-feet per year:
[http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewater/drought/drought-
fa...](http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/rewater/drought/drought-fact-check-
teed-off-about-golf-courses.html)

------
mturmon
For a less sensational perspective:
[http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/10/lopez_looks_for_bi...](http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2015/10/lopez_looks_for_biggest_w.php)

The columnist, Steve Lopez, is known for these populist stunts. Sometimes, as
in this case, it's kind of entertaining, but there's often little substance
there. This is captured in the link above, by a very seasoned independent
observer of LA, calling the above a "column gimmick."

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bluedino
Remember all the outcry when Lance Armstrong was spending $2,400 a month to
water his Austin digs?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/16lance.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/16/us/16lance.html?_r=0)

------
abduhl
1300 gallons of water per hour is 22 gpm. This is basically the same flow rate
as a garden hose. This is not a lot of water.

~~~
matheweis
That's pretty far on the high end of that...
[http://irrigation.wsu.edu/Content/Calculators/Residential/Ga...](http://irrigation.wsu.edu/Content/Calculators/Residential/Garden-
Hose-Flow.php)

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userbinator
I'm less interested in _who_ is using so much water, than _what_ it's being
used for. That rate is around 1.37 litres _per second_ , continuously.

~~~
cperciva
One possibility is that it's not actually being used for anything. A broken
pipe could leak that much water, and depending on the local geology it might
reach the water table without anyone noticing.

~~~
VikingCoder
Yeah, but they're being billed $90,000 a year.

I suspect if it was just a broken pipe, the person would be motivated to fix
it.

~~~
cheeze
This might be on a 20 million dollar estate though. The home owner probably
has never actually seen a single bill, their assistant handles that.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I had a friend who was a "household manager" in Bel Air. Basically a full-time
job just handling the administrative work of running a giant house and staff.
While part of the job was to be sure money didn't get wildly wasted, I do
kinda doubt they'd have known anything was wrong with the water bill.

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remarkEon
-> A June 1 story by the Center for Investigative Reporting did not reveal the name or address, because the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power refused to turn over that information.

No, I'm pretty sure they're prohibited from doing so by law.

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tomswartz07
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a 'soft ban' on un-necessary water
usage?

Just like when there's a drought, municipalities enact a 'burn ban', charging
those who have open fires with heavy fines.

I would assume that in the midst of a serious drought, there would also be
heavy fines associated with using non-necessary 'luxury uses' of water; such
as filling a swimming pool or watering the lawn.

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Spooky23
My wife ran billing for a water utility. Typically issues like this are multi-
family units with leaks. A running toilet costs like $2,500/quarter.

~~~
mturmon
The leak is in Bel Air: typical it is not.

For instance, one prime suspect was Rupert Murdoch's urban vanity vineyard
([https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moraga+Vineyard+Co/@34.084...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moraga+Vineyard+Co/@34.0844283,-118.4688285,456m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x80c2bcc14be88555:0xae2d1c21abe2c879!6m1!1e1))
but they ruled it out because the zip code did not match.

~~~
talmand
Just because it's in a rich area doesn't mean it couldn't be a typical leak.

I have had two properties I rented have a leak in the watering system for the
lawn. The first one was spotted right away because of the increase in water
usage, by the actual water supplier. Although this was in Vegas so they were
pretty quick to identify problems like this. The other was a single family
home and I spotted the telltale sign of a leak by a circle of grass growing
greener and faster than the rest of the yard. I informed the owners of the
likelihood of a leak and they had no idea. The leak was probably there for
months if not over a year's time because they had never bothered to check for
such things when their elderly mom lived in the house.

Now, imagine a rather large yard of a wealthy family who doesn't watch their
water bill, nor care about it, and the watering system develops a leak or
three over time.

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AcerbicZero
Perhaps they're growing alfalfa in their yard. Then its ok to use that much
water right?

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chenster
Water is not _just_ a commodity or utility. IT KEEPS US ALIVE. Without water,
we all die. If someone else uses more water, in this case, a hell lot more and
meaninglessly wasting it, and in current CA drought condition, ultimately
means less water for rest of us to drink and to keep us alive, then there's an
advent problem. I'm sick to hear that people say that's OK because on one
broke the law. It was like to be OK to discriminate people on basis of race
and religion before the equal rights amendment. CA declared a drought state of
emergency since early 2014. Doesn't that mean anything to anyone?

~~~
MichaelGG
How about it's OK because it's not that much? Commercial users dramatically
outweigh residential, even including folks like this.

The whole Cali drought situation is farcial, encouraging citizens to cut back
private use while ignoring the real big users. Under what premise is it OK for
a commercial user to have more rights to paid water use than residential?

I think it also plays into Californians' need to suffer, to pretend they're
helping. A nice restaurant in SF I like makes a fuss about serving water,
under pretense of a drought. As if that makes one shred of difference other
than pretending to do something.

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oconnore
How many desalination plants can you build and operate on $xx,000 * the
population of Bel-Air a year?

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kragen
This 1.4 liters per second (or 1300 gallons per hour, or 11.8 million gallons
per year) works out to 36 acre feet per year. California alfalfa uses 4
million to 5.5 million acre feet per year on about a million acres, so that's
about six to nine acres of alfalfa.

That means that _every single alfalfa farmer_ with more than nine acres
planted is a bigger water hog than this constantly running garden hose or
whatever it is.

That alfalfa doesn't even feed people. It feeds cows. How much beef do you
need to eat to occupy nine acres? Probably several cows per year.

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terminado
This feels like it could be a challenge similar to that DARPA challenge to
spot all of the red balloons as fast as possible.

Not nearly as trivial as observing a conspicuous balloon, though. But I'd like
to think this could be reduced to a tech challenge somehow, through ambient
humidity detectors, or something ridiculously straight-forward like that.

Obviously with enclosed structures, and plumbing being what it is, it's
probably not even close to being as simple.

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kazinator
You're not easily going to locate _the_ culprit by driving around if the
runner-up is using 1295 gallons per hour, third place is 1287, ... etc.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Uncle Phil taking a bath?

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api
Elon lives there, so maybe he's hosting some emissaries from ... elsewhere ...
who have special needs in this department.

~~~
jerf
Unlikely; as demonstrated in the documentary movie Signs, they don't really
like water. Perhaps it's a defense system.

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bkeroack
It's difficult to foster a sense of civic responsibility in foreign nationals
who are merely parking their money here.

~~~
ceejayoz
Because American billionaires would never waste water, right?

