Wasting water at Ramsey Town Center.

Citizens in past drought times had to go on imposed lawn watering constraints. Water supply is a problem. Building a third water tower was justified in part as allowing more capacity to meet varying demands, and peaks, without running all the many municipal wells at full capacity for too long a time. It is real. Expansion of the population may be resource constrained, once it becomes less market constrained as now with the housing slump in full sway.

This corner, Town Center, north east corner of Sunwood and Rhinestone, after about an inch of overnight rain, had sprinklers running this morning when I went to the Town Center mailbox.

It is irresponsible.

Sure, there is no drought now. Sure, it is fairly new turf, and an investment you'd want to protect. But bottom line, it is a commercial, big-bucks thing, where ownership can afford to put in sprinkler equipment that adapts to weather, and is not an auto-watering-after-a-big-rainfall mistake.

Think of it this way. It is not a drought year. The past two were. The aquifer is deep and the time for water to percolate is uncertain, but long. The aquifer fills at some rate, call it x, and is tapped at some rate, say y. If y is greater than x, then, with charging time delays too a factor, after the last two years water should not be wasted even if top ground water has recently been plentiful. It is common sense.

The city in revising its zoning and requirements for the Town Center should consider imposing a requirement that sprinkling systems be adapted to fit rainfall, and not on regular cycles, come hell or high water.

It would be prudent. It would be management. Deep pockets could absorb the initial capital cost of a perhaps more costly control system, set off against lesser ongoing water bills and having a sense of civic good will from not wasting water so that single-family homeowners do not have to do less with landscaping water needs because the adventurers at Town Center are profligate with a public resource.