I hate the "wasting water" nonsense.

Water in most cities gets treated and reused and this has been going on for many decades. If it gets flushed out to sea, then it evaporates and comes back as rain.

Water does not get destroyed.

Not such a bad idea to run the water for a minute or so, as long as you water your garden with the "stale water."

A microscopic amount of water molocules does actually get lost to space each day.

However, a microscopic amount is gained every day by stellar matter entering our atmosphere.

So, ya, we're about even

It's not the WATER being wasted in 'water waste', it's the money that it costs to make that water available for you. That's why city water isn't 'free'. It's inexpensive to be sure, but acquiring, disinfecting, filtering, refiltering, pumping, storing and augmenting the h2O costs a lot of money, on the whole. Sure, if you decide to leave your faucets running longer than they should, it's not a big deal, but there are approximately 350million people in the US. If all of us (I know that's not possible, but bare with me) 'wasted' 1 cup of water a day, that would be roughly 8 Billion gallons of water, which at $2.81 @ 1,000 gallons
(http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS163067+24-Sep-2008+MW20080924) equals about 22.5 million dollars. And that's if we all only waste ONE CUP each a day.

You also can't forget that in many areas of the southern US, both east and west, there are occasional DROUGHTS (http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html). This means that the water reservoirs run low and the city does not have an excess of water. I've experienced this living in NW Florida for more than 10 years.

As plentiful as water is for us in the west, it is NOT as plentiful as air and we can't (literally and metaphorically) afford to treat it that way. Water conservation is about reducing cost. Even if 100% of our electricity was produced by solar, wind, and nuclear energy, there would still be energy conservation efforts because it costs money to build and maintain power plants, capacitors, transformers, power stations, AC/DC conversion stations, and so on. Just like the water system, the electrical system can be overloaded in a particular reason, making life miserable for everyone there.

If you can't get behind an idea simply because it's the right thing to do, then at least get behind it because it wastes money.

Vance,

Money is a social construct. It's not real and it's not based on on anything. If it costs a billion dollars to run the water for a second it's just as meaningless as if it cost a dollar.

Time is a social construct as well. That doesn't mean that a person, community or nation can never run out of it. Just as a man can never get back the year he 'wasted' sitting in a jail cell because he made a bad decision, we cannot re-spend the money we had. Once it is spent, it's gone for us. Yes, in the case of money, it moves on to someone else's hands, and we all have opportunities in our life to acquire more money, but we all have BUDGETS because we know that if we 'waste' $5 on an over-priced trinket that we end up regretting later, that's $5 we can't spend on food or gas or our education, no matter how much we regret buying that trinket.

Besides, whether time and money are social constructs is not important. What we DO with both creates, destroys and perpetuates things that are as real as the water we drink and the keyboard I'm typing on.

Chloramine went into Vermont's Champlain Water District water in 4/06. My health was turned upside down, and then I co-founded the grass roots citizens group People Concerned About Chloramine (PCAC). To date we have over 300 symptom reports and more are coming in is as the word gets out, which helps people to connect their symptoms to their chloraminated tap water. Our state agencies are reading from the same script as the San Francisco Public Utility Commission and every other state agency that is working overtime to keep the chloramine image squeaky clean as a "safe water disinfecting chemical". Our state agencies have not only not tried to help people suffering from symptoms from chloraminated water, they have tried to shut the citizens up. It disgusts me no end.

Readers may not know that grass roots citizen groups are popping up as chloramine makes its way into more and more public water supplies and poisoning more and more people and pets, and killing massive amounts of fish and invertebrates when spilled into waterways from broken water mains. Besides CA and VT, there are also groups in NY and PA. The PA group has managed to keep chloramine from going into their water supply since 8/07. Learn more about that at www.chloramineinfocenter.net.

We intend to and are beginning to take this important issue to the national level. Please visit the VT and CA www.chloramine.org websites for more information. If you have concerns, think you have symptoms, and/or want to start a chloramine citizens group in your area, we have lots of experience and information to share with you, along with support. Contact me through our website.

Vance,

The telling of time is the construct, not the effect of it. Money is a social construct invented long ago, and it's effects are real but not necessary or immutable like time because it's an entire fiction.

Money is similar to religion in that.

Theadlerian. Would you agree that cost is meaningless if you were charged a billion dollars for a hamburger? I think not. You can say it is meaningless because you don't see it as coming directly out of your pocket, but in truth you really are paying for it.
Also, water can be destroyed, but more importantly, it can be polluted to the point that it can't be effectively cleaned. As a result, we lose a massive amount of drinking water every day.
Saying something doesn't matter because it is a social construct really only makes sense in abstract philosophy and is just an pseudointellectual deceit when applied to real world issues.