Water Wisdom

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issued a state-wide drought watch as the Old Dominion suffers under one of the driest summers in years. The announcement comes as a shock to most of us here in Northern Virginia who remember how much snow fell only six months ago, shutting down the region. But while the snowfall made for some spectacularly green lawns and farms in the spring, the relentless heat that's covered much of the state has made the ground and the crops in it begin to shrivel, and sent the rest of us to cranking our A.C.

The plight of Virginia's farmers as they face what they have to consider to be a drought, no matter that the state hasn't made the official designation, brings to mind our own everyday efforts to conserve fresh water. When it comes to water there really is no substitute. OK, all of you joking beer or wine fans face reality: without water there's no beer and no grapes. So whether you drink the clear and pure stuff or the crisp and golden, or take it as coffee practically intravenously like me, we all need to keep water and its wise use top of mind.

But how to do that when in 99.99 percent of the time, water is just there -- right at the tap, on the supermarket shelves or in the five-gallon water cooler. What's common is taken for granted, even if it is the most precious thing on.

One way to begin to value water is to actually begin valuing it, or placing a real market price on the use of water. Most of us do that every day when we're in the convenience store and slap down about a buck for a one liter bottle of water. But when it comes to the water that flows into our homes, the water is a lot cheaper, but actually no less clean. In fact, the Washington Post reported last month that water that comes into our homes costs pennies. No wonder we waste so much of it.

I'm not saying that the water that comes into our homes should cost four bucks a gallon; that would give real meaning to the phrase "flushing your money down the toilet," but what I am saying is that if we're a country that believes in the power of the free market and the market prices that come with it, then we should begin applying those principles to water.

Doing so won't reverse Virginia's drought watch or flood the parched farms across the state, but thinking of ways to more wisely use the water we do have just might be the best thing that we can do on our own behalf in the long run. I for one don't want to live the song lyrics ... 'you never miss the water until the well runs dry.'