13 July, 2007

Water is Precious


...Provided that you have a sense of humour. I took this pic of a water conservation banner half covered in water hanging off the side walls of the Liffey Quays this morning in the lashing rain. The light patch to the right of the leaflet was rain water pouring into the river from a pipe half-way up the Quays wall, though the image quality is a bit under-pixellated on my camera phone.

One of those days, I guess. Friday 13th, full moon this evening and as anyone in LH2000 can tell you the constituents go crazy if there's a full moon.

Well, if I was running a water conservation campaign I'd make damn sure that I booked the slots in combination with a rain gear or cinema blockbuster campaign . That way if the heavens opened they could pick up the tab and run their own campaign, and there wouldn't be egg on any one's face.

In fairness the Dublin City Council campaign is a good one, but I'd hope that we could do more at national level to reduce water consumption. We could change the Building Regulations to bring in low-flow nozzles on taps and dual flush toilets,which would be a practical step towards reducing water use in new buildings. It seems crazy that the four County Councils in Dublin are thinking of building a pipeline to the Shannon or the Boyne. I'm with Mary O'Rourke on this one when she says hands off our water. I'm not sure that her Arcadia would quite become the arid desert that she claims, but who knows what water extraction, along with climate change might bring. Of course the city fathers and mothers are working on on reducing leaks as well, though I'm not sure if the translation of their literature into Arabic was the wisest use of resources, a touch of selling coals to Newcastle there.

Unless we can get our own leaks under control we shouldn't contemplate spending a fortune on pipelines halfway across the country.

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