When Waterless Urinals Become the Peace Pipe

Just as expected, water restrictions are starting to pit residents against residents in some California cities, and even more common, water restrictions are pitting residents against local businesses.

St. Helena, in California’s Napa Valley, is a perfect example. This is California’s wine country, and the wine industry has proven to be a dependable eight-to-ten-billion-dollar industry for the area for years. To help protect it, this small town mandated that businesses, mostly wineries, cut back water consumption by 10 percent.

But what everyone in the town is steamed up about is that residents have been asked to cut back?43 percent. That’s nearly half of their regular water consumption.

Even more, residents are receiving public notices from the city “admonishing them for not saving more water,” according to a report in the?St. Helena Star.

The newspaper published an opinion piece about the situation and these way off-balance restrictions, stating the town is “implying local business investments are more important than home investment. This is quite puzzling. Residents collectively provide more revenue to the city than businesses through property taxes and sales tax and [they] support our community through volunteering to support clubs, community programs, local sports, and youth programs. Residents are the lifeblood of our town.”

However, the newspaper decided that instead of just complaining about the situation, they would offer commercial water customers ways to reduce water consumption that most likely will help them surpass the mandatory 10 percent. Interestingly, their number one suggestion was the following:

Convert all urinals to waterless systems.

Why would installing waterless urinals be their number one suggestion?

Well, there are many reasons. Waterless urinals tend to be less costly than traditional, water-using urinals. They are also less expensive to install because they do not have as many plumbing requirements and another saving, they have no troublesome flush handles, manual or automatic. This means repairs to waterless urinals are rarely, if ever, needed — another cost savings.

Oh, but we almost forgot. Installing waterless urinals was their number one suggestion because one urinal can save as much as 35,000 gallons of water per year.

Let’s take a closer look at this number. If one winery in the area has just ten waterless urinals installed, that means that one winery could be saving as much as 350,000 gallons of water per year. That is a significant reduction in water consumption and why many commercial facilities find that just by installing waterless urinals, they can meet many new, mandated requirements to reduce water consumption.

?If you are wondering what else the newspaper suggested, here are their additional recommendations:?

· Confirm all toilets are using 1.5 or fewer gallons per flush.

· Signage asking customers and employees to conserve water.

· Signage at hotels and spas requesting short showers.

· Signage requesting hotel guests to not require fresh linens each day.

· Require all spas and health clubs to forbid members from coming in just to shower.

· Limiting fleet vehicle and truck washings to once a month.

· Eliminate hosing down outside areas, concrete pads, and so on, that can be swept.

· Reduce all outside landscape watering by 43 percent.

· Reduce vineyard irrigation by 43 percent (even if well water, groundwater affects all citizens).

· No tilling of vineyards (dust requires us to wash our cars, houses, solar panels, furniture).

· Forbid washing the outside of winery tanks and commercial buildings.

· Forbid the hosing down of grape bins and gondolas not owned by the winery.

Added the newspaper, “the city needs to make changes to the commercial water use restrictions quickly, such that real conservation can occur and help all of us get through this difficult time. The residents have more than sacrificed. We ask for equitable water restrictions.”

It’s possible that just installing waterless urinals is all that is needed, which won’t be much of a sacrifice at all and likely add some peace and calm to this riled little town.