Shallow Thoughts : tags : water

Appreciation for Running Water

We were visiting relatives in Colorado when Dave's phone rang. Someone from county utilities, letting us know we had a major water leak at the house, it had been happening for more than a month, and this month's water bill was going to be over $700. Yikes! And ... gee, thanks, for waiting a month to let us know about it.

(Aside: the county recently force-upgraded everyone to new "smart meters" which are supposed to send alerts for problems like this. However, that only works if you can log in and set up an email address — and we'd been going back and forth with the county for months about why the system wouldn't let us set up an account, but nobody in the utilities department seemed to know much about how the online access worked.)

We had them send someone to turn off the water to the house. When we returned home a few days later, we called again to have the water turned back on briefly so we could see what was going on. The leak was somewhere between the meter and the house, making it our responsibility (natch). The county said they had no way of telling precisely where: it could be somewhere under the driveway, or under the garage (ouch!)

It was Friday, so of course there was no chance of persuading anyone to come out and take a look.

Read more ...

Tags: water, infrastructure
[ 18:00 Aug 12, 2023    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Snowy Grapevine, Rainy Central Valley, Unappetizing Sagebrush

The Grapevine, the pass through which Interstate 5 crosses the mountains north of LA, was covered in snow today. Gorman, near the highest point of the pass, was blanketed in white, not even bushes or grass poking through.

We'd hesitated before coming this way -- the Caltrans web site had listed the pass as closed until a scant half hour before we left. Signs on the highway at Castaic still said the pass was closed, but we put our trust in the web, and forged on. Happily, the road was open, clean of snow, and barely even wet, giving a lovely view of the snowy Transverse Ranges as we passed through this unexpected white christmas. Also fun was seeing a double semi trailer full of oranges passing through this wintry landscape.

Descending into the central valley, we saw the first "Food grows where water flows" sign at Buttonwillow, pinned to a trailer in a field of sagebrush and tumbleweed. Perhaps a goat would have found some food there. At least sage (which I do like in cooking) is closer to culinary than the cotton that all the farms here were growing for the last two years (presumably due to subsidies) the remnants of which still litter most of the empty fields along the I-5 corridor.

"Farm water feeds the nation", fifty miles farther north, also stood in a field of tumbleweed, but the California Aqueduct was nearby, so it was at least somewhat topical. The next "Food grows where water flows" adjoined a vinyard. Does wine count as food? Maybe they were table grapes.

The Buttonwillow rest stop features lovely woven hanging birds' nests, visible now when the trees are bare of leaves and looking like something out of an African weaverbird documentary. I didn't get a good look at the birds occupying those trees now; usually those I-5 rest stops are populated mostly by blackbirds and ravens, but I'll have to keep a sharp eye out next time I pass through in spring.

Tags: travel, sign, politics, water
[ 19:33 Jan 04, 2005    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]