During the dry months, there were ample uses for the water collected in the shower while the temperature warmed up. Now, there are no ways that I can think of to utilize water outside the house.
So, what do you do with your buckets of water during the winter months when good conservation practices recommend collecting it, but there's no outside use?
Water the house plants? Yes.
Use it to flush the toilets? On a mellow yellow pot, Yes.
What other uses for this water now that we are enjoying a rainy season—with no guarantee it will last? Suggestions welcome.
Weather patterns look very promising, but we had a wet fall two years ago and the spigot turned off come the New Year.
Incidentally, customers of Zone 7 (Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin and the Dougherty Valley in San Ramon), exceeded the state conservation averages impressively, saving more than 30 percent year-over-year in the dry months. That's an impressive and community-minded response.
More on what's wrong with legislators in Sacramento. The Legislature convened for one day on Dec. 1 to swear in new members, but that didn't stop some legislators from introducing bills.
According to a report in the Monterey County Herald, Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville) introduced legislation to ban the use of "Redskins" as a mascot in California public schools. The name is still used by four schools in the state and Alejo wants to end that.
Why it is appropriate for the Legislature, which has plenty of serious issues to tackle, to dictate nickname policy to local school? Simply stated, it is not.
Of course, it mirrors what is going on in Washington D.C. with the Redskins where team owner Daniel Snyder has been adamant in his refusal to change the long-standing nickname.
That hasn't stopped the Washington D.C. delegate (who does not have a vote in Congress) from introducing a bill to strip the federal tax-exempt status from the Washington franchise. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced that bill.
Just what a nickname has to do with tax-exempt status is another valid question. Given the national debt just rose to over $18 billion, the wars in the Middle East, the president's action on immigration, to name just a few pressing national issues—Congress needs to stick to critical national issues and let a private business function as such. If Snyder's business operations started to be negatively affected by the Redskins name, he will take an action.
