WANTED: Sustainable Landscape Services for Savvy Consumers
For decades, Billy Goodnick has been showing people how to create sustainable landscapes – and how to ditch their lawns. But don't think of me as a "bad guy," he says.... more
Florida “Graywater” Debate Sets Stage
| Latest NewsFlorida legislators are preparing to discuss the biggest overhaul of state water laws in forty years, and observers say the debate may set the stage for similar discussions around the country. Among the hottest topics is who has the right to “gray” or reclaimed water?
The state is the country’s biggest user of graywater. While reclaimed water accounts for less than one percent of all water use nationally, in Florida that number approaches 10 percent – some 660 million gallons per day.
Current law allows Florida to regulate all water use. The new law, which observers say has a good chance of success in a business-friendly state legislature, would cede control of graywater to the utilities – public or private – that produced it.
Environmentalists fear that the practical impact will be to put graywater up for sale to the highest bidder; that graywater could be sold to water a private golf course instead of for the benefit of the public.
Business interests contend that the environmentalist fear is overblown, since the state will still have oversight of the initial water production process. They also charge that state regulation has had a chilling effect on the creation of new technologies for water reclamation.
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