Every minute, about five gallons of water passed through the sinks, sprinklers, fountain and pool at Lance Armstrong’s house in June, making the retired professional cyclist Austin’s biggest water-using individual that month.
That’s water to the tune of 222,900 gallons for one month at a cost of $1,630.23.
When asked about it, Armstrong was shocked he had used that much on his 1.1 acre property. Shocked … because he has a management company that pays his bills for him. Must be nice to not only have enough money to have a management company manage your daily existence for you but also to have so much you don’t notice that management company is paying enormous bills in your name. Does he never ever look at his own bank statement?
What’s possibly even more disgusting than using an amount of water equivalent to 26 average Austin households — also equivalent to our entire yearly water usage (did I ever mention I suck at math?) the amount of water Lin and I would use in 150 years — is the fact he wasn’t even in Austin during the month of June. Yeah … must be nice to be wealthy.
If the above link doesn’t work for you and you really want to read about all the rich idiots on the west side of Austin using far too much water, here’s the link to the original story, which may require logging into the site.
Isn’t there a way to reuse all that water? It’s such a waste for one person to go through all that…. :|
No kidding that’s a lot of water! I originally screwed up my math, so it actually works out to 150 years of our entire household usage (If I actually watered the lawn twice a week all year round, which I don’t). 150 years for us, or one years worth for 150 households that are as thrifty with water as we are. That’s a lot of water, especially considering the fact Austin is starting to run low on the stuff.
If we don’t get some real rain soon, I know we’ll be going into the most drastic water restrictions. Won’t really effect us much, as I decided a few weeks ago to just let the yard live or die on its own, and the garden is getting pulled up this week too.
But yeah … way too much consumption there Lance!
Honestly? His fountains came off the water main?
Just about every fountain I’ve heard of reclaims its own water with the very occasional top-up.
That’s what I don’t get. I’ve lived in a place that had a fountain, and even in the dead of summer, we only had to top it off with the hose every few weeks. What kind of fountains does he have on that 1.1 acre property?! Or do they empty and refill the swimming pool every month or what?!
Unless the fountains were majorly in need of repair and had some way of automatically refilling when they ran low I suppose. Or maybe they were just incredibly badly designed so half the spray went over the edge of them.
It’s not the fountain. I just looked at photos of his house, and it’s the damn lawn … and they probably use one of those filtering systems on the pool that dumps x amount of water a day and refills. I’d bet on the lawn though, which I am fairly certain is not kept as green and sweet looking by only watering on the two days a week schedule we are all supposed to follow. That’s about par for the course out in west Austin. Perfectly green, non-natural grass lawns all summer long, and they don’t care when they water or how much they water … or how many disgusting lawn chemicals end up in the aquifer.
I’d like an immaculate lawn too, and it wouldn’t be that hard to achieve. It would require me to not be quite as environmentally conscious, to not care about the chemicals or whether or not there continues to be drinkable water under my town, to be able to flip off the watering schedule with impunity, and to be a whole lot wealthier to pay for it all. I’ve been watering my two days a week, and right now, I’m just hoping my lawn survives. It’s brown, crunchy, and unhappy, and it’s mostly natural local grasses.
I know it’s the USA and if you can afford it you can consume it, but with things like water, everyone needs to think about the big picture. Our drought situation isn’t getting better. It’s been getting worse for a long time. If we end up in a water crisis in Austin, it’s going to screw up not only Austin but a lot of other towns too. We are the wettest place around here. So sure, if you can pay for it, go ahead and use it, but don’t get upset when one day there just isn’t any water to be had.
Speaking of which, I have to go set up the sprinkler. I forgot to water on Thursday, and I hoped it would rain. It hasn’t, and the front yard looks like it’s about to shrivel up and die. I won’t be using quite as much water as Lance though. ;)