U-Talk: To what degree do you plan to reduce your outdoor water use this year?
-
- Robert Salazar
-
- Sidney Metcalf
-
- Ashley Riojas
-
- Lefty Montoya
-
- Alan White
Editor’s note: U-Talk is a weekly feature in which we ask five local residents to tell us their thoughts about a particular issue. Responses may be edited for clarity and length.
“Honestly, I have never been one to conserve water, and I know that there is room for improvement on my part for doing that. Sometimes, I just really need to get the lawn watered and stuff like that; then it rains. And the climate here in Utah is a little different, so it fluctuates as to how much water we should be using. And sometimes it gets really dry to the point that your grass will die immediately, so that’s kind of my issue. If you have a weird-looking home, depending on the neighborhood you are at, then the homeowners association is going to come after you. … Honestly, I don’t really see myself changing the way I use the water where I live at. If anything, I see myself using more, because the summers seem to be getting that much hotter every year.” — Robert Salazar, Clearfield
“I live in an apartment complex, so I have very little control over the kind of water usage I have outdoors. The apartment complex takes care of all of that. … I think that the summers have been getting increasingly hot and dry over the past few years. And, also, I think that in Utah, we tend to plant and water as though we were somewhere further east, as though we weren’t a desert. I really wish that people around here — including people who are in my apartment complex — would focus more on hardscaping and watering plants very deeply. Just having the kind of plants that grow very deep roots and are very drought-tolerant is something I would like to see more of.” — Sidney Metcalf, Ogden
“I live in an apartment, so I can’t really control how they use the outdoor water. However, I can control how much water I use in my sink to do the dished, I can control how much I fill the bathtub up, I can control how long I take showers and I can control making sure that my water is all the way turned off.” — Ashley Riojas, Ogden
“I am just pretty much following the city guidelines. … It seems like the rivers and the secondary water and everything is quite full. So, we’ll do our best to use that until we can’t. I own my home, and my wife handles most of the city guidelines, but we are both pretty aware of our water usage.” — Lefty Montoya, Ogden
“I don’t really have much use. It doesn’t apply to me — I don’t own a home and I don’t have a yard to take care of.” — Alan White, Ogden
Photos and interviews by Adam Rubin, Special to the Standard-Examiner.
Have a suggestion for a question you’d like us to ask? Send it to cityed@standard.net.