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Editorial: Water crisis or not, water conservation is a must

Good news! Williams has some water in its reservoirs. Not only that but Dogtown 1 is producing water again.

It really is a relief. After more than a year with Level 4 water restrictions in place - Crisis level - a late winter storm helped get the city out of its water crisis.

Around 14 inches of snow filled the city's five reservoirs with close to 200 million gallons of water. That means water restrictions have dropped to the lowest level.

But as Williams City Manager Brandon Buchanan said in this week's story in the News, it is hardly time to use the city's water frivolously.

The city now has about a 16-month supply of water. Enough to ease restrictions and gain a bit of breathing room but it still isn't a huge surplus.

Recently a senior water scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech said California has a one-year water supply left. That's for the whole state. That's a pretty dire situation.

While the city of Williams and even the state of Arizona may not be in that kind of predicament, the fact of the matter is water shortages could become more of the norm in the future.

Crisis in Williams or not, we should all do our part to conserve water.

Installing water-saving shower heads and low-flow faucet aerators is a great place to start.

Taking shorter showers and turning off the water while you brush your teeth are both good ideas.

When washing dishes by hand, don't leave the water running for rinsing.

Water your lawn only when it needs it. Or better yet, landscape without a lawn.

The list of conservation ideas could go on much longer.

It may seem that efforts like these are just drops in the bucket (pardon the pun but it was hard to resist) but we need to start somewhere, right?

We're not debating climate change here. We're just talking common sense. Williams got lucky with the recent snowfall. And it's not like the city is totally out of the woods as far as water goes. Well pumps fail and as we all know, you can count on mother nature to defy expectations more often than not.


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