New York wastes water

Coming from the Land of Droughts and flooding rains one of the things that I noticed immediately when arriving in New York was the use of water. As I walked to my accommodation early on the morning of our arrival we dodged puddles and hoses as the sidewalks out the front of buildings where hosed and scrubbed. Such a thing is almost abhorrent to me as currently in a great deal of Australia one can not even water their lawn let alone water down the side walk. Any such efforts can result in a fine. 


Obviously there is a need to maintain a level of cleanliness is an area as densely populated as Manhattan and the New Yorker that I was staying with was quick to point out is that if the sidewalk isn't kept clean then the building can get 'cited' for not maintaining it. While a few of the buildings where using high pressure cleaning systems which by there very nature use less water, a great deal of the cleaning that I saw was being down with hoses that didn't even have nozzles on them.


The second thing that I noticed was sprinklers running all over the place, in the middle of the day, quite often spraying water into puddles or big pools of mud, indicating that they had been running quite a while. I guess to most people that this wouldn't seem weird or even particularly wasteful. But again, it is one of those things that you just wouldn't see in Australia at the moment. I live in Melbourne and until a couple of months ago the only time I was allowed to water with a sprinkler system was between Midnight and 2 AM on two days of the week. This has since been relaxed to being able to water between midnight and 8AM on two days of the week. Otherwise watering was to be done by hand held hose, again only on two days of the week and never between 8 AM and 8 PM. So to see giant puddle forming displays of sprinklers all over the place in the middle of the day struck me as odd.


The third thing I noticed is the ridiculous amount of water that is present in an American toilet, to the point of making the passing of a large meal from the night before dangerously likely to incur splash back and an over enthusiastic wipe can result in a handful of soggy paper. I did not see one half flush toilet anywhere in New York. Also, the majority of urinals that I visited flushed on approach and often departure, each flush taking at least a gallon of water. No where in New York did I see a waterless urinal or seemingly even a timed flush urinal.


Now I contrast this to Boston, the first bathroom I used has waterless urinals and a sign on the wall explaining why the new taps that where fitted where good (sensor activated, temperature controlled) at conserving both energy and water. This theme was reflected across the town, never did I see a sidewalk or pavement getting hosed down, nor did I see sprinklers running during the day. I did see some sprinklers running at night. There where many water less urinals and there seemed to be an awareness across the city of the need to conserve water and energy. An awareness that I didn't see any where in New York. Indeed the only energy conservation awareness that I saw was the news discussing shops being fined for having doors open with their air conditioning on. They where using it as a gimmick to pull in customers during the heatwave conditions. 


I shall finish this post with a disclaimer, I am sure that there are people and venues in New York that are concerned about their water usage, I just didn't see them.