After our trip to the Big Bend, I no longer take water for granted. There is a big hullabaloo in this state over "water mining" and it will be as big a deal as the death of "free range". Texas has some funky water laws on the books, and I will admit it needs some adjustment to preserve the natural aquifers, but the issue has the smell of the carpetbaggers who bought up all the natural gas and oil rights from unsuspecting landowners in the 80's. I must be careful how I approach the subject at work, as an intern in the office is partnered in a company that proposes to make a killing off of water mining. I am the lone donkey in the midst of very wealthy elephants. The intern has tried to sell me on the theory that private business can better handle the water situation than the state government.

bottled lake erie water? hmmm... i can't really think of any marketing ploy that would sell brown water. the first time i went into lake erie after moving to cleveland, i itched for a week...literally. i haven't gone in since.

AMEN. How about the ones that water in the pouring rain?

Folks tied into municipal water sources all too easily lose sight of the actual scarcity of H20.
Even those of us on wells sometimes forget this resource's limits. A couple of years ago, in supposedly verdant New England we were in drought conditions. Out 30 foot deep dug well (servicable to the property for maybe 170 years) ran dry. It happened while we had a party with 70 guests over. It too two months to get any more than a trickle back up. This meant traveling 12 miles over to an available pulbic artesian well that still flowed freely; planning for when and where to shower, and driving 16 miles in the other direction to a laundrymat. Lots of planning.
When we went to Florida a couple of years ago, at a time when much of that state was at least semi-drought, the built-up areas spoke grimly about rationing water to residences, while big golf course owners lobbied to keep the sprinkler systems on the greens running unabated. Hell, even when the newsmedia was doing regular features on the lowering of the water tables in the Everglades, the gof course owners kept squaking as if teh social fabric would shred were the fairways to brown a little that year.
I've long guessed this to be an urban perspective, out of touch with nature's realities when water resources get low. But it's sub-urban as well.
Perhaps one could gum up the sprinkler heads with mud or liquid steel. Not a solution, I realize (and one that could very well get someone arrested if caught).
But when you think about it, are those profilaget water wasters any different than the rest of us but with pools and lush lawns instead of SUVs to feed liquid nourishment.
Sadly, the waste is all too much inherent with our culture.