Slaking a Region's Thirst While Cleaning Its Beaches
The title of this article says it all - rain is pollution. This small misconception is preventing relatively low -cost rainwater harvesting solutions from helping solve our growing water problem.
This is also an invisible tax on all of us. Hardscapes promote runoff, runoff promotes pollution and pollution must be cleaned up with waste water treatment plants.The costs of these large, oft-time approaching billion dollar plants, is sped like peanut butter across all of us at a city, county, state and federal level. Yet, the "polluter" do not get taxed at a higher rate. They get a free ride.
We need to start taxing stormwater runoff. If it leaves your property, you pay for it. If you build to 100 year flood standards with all rain staying on your property you don't. This would greatly reduce this "pollution causing rain" as well as reduce the need for large stormwater plants.
It is great to see LA thinking about dealing with it's stormwater issue in an integrated fashion maybe more cities will follow. However, taxing us all when those actually creating the problem are not paying more is flat wrong.
Somehow polluters tend to get a free-ride at the cost to all of us. We need to create a true cost of business - pollute you pay, don't pollute you don't. Pollution hurts us all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/us/los-angeles-plan-to-turn-pollution-into-drinking-water.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
What do you think?
The title of this article says it all - rain is pollution. This small misconception is preventing relatively low -cost rainwater harvesting solutions from helping solve our growing water problem.
This is also an invisible tax on all of us. Hardscapes promote runoff, runoff promotes pollution and pollution must be cleaned up with waste water treatment plants.The costs of these large, oft-time approaching billion dollar plants, is sped like peanut butter across all of us at a city, county, state and federal level. Yet, the "polluter" do not get taxed at a higher rate. They get a free ride.
We need to start taxing stormwater runoff. If it leaves your property, you pay for it. If you build to 100 year flood standards with all rain staying on your property you don't. This would greatly reduce this "pollution causing rain" as well as reduce the need for large stormwater plants.
It is great to see LA thinking about dealing with it's stormwater issue in an integrated fashion maybe more cities will follow. However, taxing us all when those actually creating the problem are not paying more is flat wrong.
Somehow polluters tend to get a free-ride at the cost to all of us. We need to create a true cost of business - pollute you pay, don't pollute you don't. Pollution hurts us all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/us/los-angeles-plan-to-turn-pollution-into-drinking-water.html?emc=eta1&_r=0
What do you think?
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