A Message to Our Readers,
A recent report highlighted an interesting success story: Los Angeles has managed to reduce its water consumption despite its growing population. This achievement stems from a profound shift towards a conservation culture, catalyzed by severe droughts in the 1970s. Simple yet effective measures, like improved plumbing and changes in societal norms and policies, played a crucial role. A 2024 survey revealed that an impressive 90 percent of Southern Californians now prioritize daily water conservation, even when not facing immediate drought conditions.
Inspired by Los Angeles’s progress, we reached out to readers nationwide to hear their thoughts on this approach and their personal water-saving efforts. Over 500 individuals generously shared their insights.
Why Every Drop Counts
The importance of water conservation became starkly clear to many, like Daniel Cortez from New York City. Having experienced the city’s first drought warning in two decades last fall, which even led to wildfires, Daniel remarked, “New York often takes water for granted. The 2024 drought served as a powerful reminder that our water resources are finite, and even our forests are vulnerable.”
Beyond immediate supply, conserving water also has significant environmental benefits. As Ashlynn Stillwell, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, emphasized, “Every gallon of water we save is also energy conserved.” The processes of treating, transporting, and heating water are all incredibly energy-intensive.
In regions like the Northeast, excessive water use has caused rivers to dwindle, leading to detrimental effects such as widespread fish die-offs. Shimon Anisfeld, a Yale instructor and author of “Water Management,” urged, “We all need water, but it’s essential to use it responsibly. By reducing our consumption, even slightly, we can help preserve the ecological health of the river systems that sustain us.”
So, what practical steps can we take to achieve this? We’ve compiled some straightforward starting points.
Assess Your Home’s Water Efficiency
An excellent first step is to conduct a water audit in your home. This can help you understand where your water is being used most and can even reveal hidden leaks.
Since the U.S. implemented national standards in 1992, water-efficient fixtures and appliances—including toilets, showerheads, and washing machines—have become widely available and have continuously improved in performance. The potential for further savings is substantial: a 2017 report estimated that if every household adopted today’s most efficient devices, indoor water use could decrease by an additional 35 percent or more.
In areas prone to combined sewer overflows, smart timing of water-consuming appliance use can help maintain clean waterways. Some cities, such as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, even offer alert systems to help residents adjust their water usage and prevent these overflows.
Consider Your Outdoor Spaces
Outdoor watering is a significant consumer of water resources. However, the best ecological landscaping solutions vary depending on your location. In arid regions, replacing traditional, thirsty lawns with drought-tolerant plants is crucial. In areas with more consistent rainfall, simply allowing conventional turf lawns to naturally brown during summer can be an effective conservation measure.
Dan Wiitala from Upper Michigan shared his family’s long-standing commitment: “We decided never to use a single drop of water for lawn watering when we purchased our property on Lake Superior.” This year, he’s further embraced native plants, allowing “the native vegetation to take over, more or less.”
In Northern California, college student Shreya Ramachandran went a step further, installing a gray-water system to repurpose water from her dishwasher and washing machine for irrigating her family’s trees and shrubs. She even founded a nonprofit, The Grey Water Project, to promote this innovative recycling method.
Professor Stillwell also highlighted the benefits of rain barrels, which not only ease local drainage issues and prevent sewer overflows but also provide a sustainable source for garden watering. “I haven’t used my outdoor faucet to water my garden all year because I’ve used my rain barrel that is helping mitigate flooding in my city,” she noted.
Everyday Habits That Make a Difference
Many readers shared personal, seemingly small actions that are easy for anyone to incorporate into their daily lives, and which collectively have a huge impact:
- Taking shorter and less frequent showers.
- Collecting and reusing water that typically goes down the drain, such as while waiting for the shower to warm up or rinsing fruits and vegetables in the sink.
- Turning off the tap while shaving or brushing your teeth.
- Only flushing solid waste in toilets.
- Running dishwashers and washing machines exclusively when they are completely full.
- Scraping food off dishes instead of rinsing them before loading the dishwasher.
- Washing cars with a bucket of water instead of a hose, or opting for commercial carwashes that recycle water.
- Using a broom to clean sidewalks and driveways instead of a hose.
These individual efforts “can also inspire behavioral change in others, creating a ripple effect,” Stillwell explained. “While it might feel like, ‘I’m just one person, what can I do?’ When you multiply that by millions, we truly achieve something significant.”
As a publication aptly put it some six decades ago, during a period of declining reservoir levels, “Saving Water Is Game Any Number Can Play.”
— Anna Diamond
Revisiting Past Challenges
Water resources often experience cycles of abundance and scarcity. In our current era of extreme climate and weather patterns, droughts frequently alternate with severe storms and floods. This variability often leads to conflict and stagnation as communities strive to balance their immediate needs with long-term risks. Our “Headway” initiative began in 2021 with an essay by Michael Kimmelman, exploring the efforts to redevelop East River Park in Lower Manhattan. This project aimed to protect New York City’s coastline from flooding, yet it sparked division among residents over balancing flood mitigation with other priorities, like preserving mature trees.
Today, the initial phase of the East River Park redesign is nearing completion. Additionally, Wagner Park, located on Lower Manhattan’s west side, has undergone a similar redesign as part of the broader coastal resilience program. Michael recently revisited both projects to assess their outcomes and reflect on why progress in such complex endeavors can be so challenging to achieve.
The Headway initiative is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor. The Woodcock Foundation also funds Headway’s public square. These funders have no control over the selection, focus, or editing of stories and do not review content before publication. The New York Times maintains full editorial control over the Headway initiative.