As our community faces the consequences of an exceptionally severe summer drought that has dried up riverbeds across Massachusetts and heads into what is predicted to be a very dry September, it may be helpful to consider what can be done to mitigate the harm the drought is wreaking.
Front page stories in the Boston Globe in the last week show fish, turtles and birds dying both from lack of water and likely from the greater concentration of toxins such as mercury and other common human pollutants in the water that remains to them. Cities and towns including Billerica and Ashland are scrambling to find access to water as their wells go dry; Ashland is in the process of applying for an emergency water hookup to the Quabbin Reservoir. While it is true that Newton’s thirst is quenched for the moment by the vast reserves of the Quabbin, the fact that the reservoir is fed by a rapidly diminishing Swift River is cause for concern; also, models that predict the ability of the Quabbin to continue to provide water do not take into account the added number of communities hooking into it or the persistence of the drought and ongoing heat.
The occasional bright green lawn notwithstanding, one does not have to look far to see the consequences of the drought in Newton: the burned off lawns, the desertification of the soil in our woodlands and gardens and agricultural lands, the trees turning color and shedding leaves as a stress response, or just dying.
Mayor Setti Warren has outlined a very complete list of indoor and outdoor interventions that homeowners can take to decrease their water use.
For those who would like to go further, we would like to suggest these additional ideas:
Water your trees and shrubs
The Boston Globe reported on 8/29/16 that 66 million trees have died in California; a brief glance at Newton’s tree lawns and gardens will quickly reveal that many of our trees are also in trouble. Meteorologist and horticulturist Dave Epstein of growingwisdom.com recently tweeted: “No significant rain in sight through mid-September. If you can water shrubs/trees do so. Let perennials go dormant.” Why water trees? Trees provide oxygen to the atmosphere, and act as a carbon and heat sink. So helping trees weather the drought could be considered an investment in survival.
How to water? The sort of watering that we do for lawns actually kills trees. According to Julie Malakie of the Newton Tree Conservancy, “daily superficial [watering] is not good. That keeps the top couple of inches or so moist, but isn’t getting to the rest of the roots. And it encourages root development in those top inches, which will be most vulnerable to drying out if not watered in the next drought.
Most of a tree's roots are in the top foot and a half of soil, and generally the roots will extend outward beyond the canopy. So that's the area that ideally should be watered deeply, at least an inch once per week. Even better, “use a soaker hose… to avoid losing water to evaporation.”
Xeriscape—Xeriscaping with drought resistant plantings or just with stone and sculpture, beautifully illustrated by a lovely home garden I visited in Newton Highlands, replaces lawns, which are considered a non-essential use of water. This strategy is being widely adopted in the West.
Decrease your electricity consumption
According to Alex Prud’homme, author of The Ripple Effect, “After agriculture, power generation is the greatest user of water in the world.” Each kilowatt hour of electricity (from coal—the cheapest form of energy) uses 25 gallons of water. Roughly half of our fresh water is used by cooling towers at power plants. Flick on a light, and it’s like turning on a faucet. Decreasing your electricity consumption by running your air conditioning five degrees warmer or taking off a jacket or sweater actually saves water.
Plant trees—to decrease the need for air conditioning and therefore water (see electricity consumption—above; plus trees are nature’s natural air conditioner) and as a counterweight to the remarkable deforestation that Newton is undergoing secondary to the drought and a recent zeal for ever-larger houses.
Decrease water use at your business as well as at your home
Many communities are evaluating not just their individual but also the corporate uses of water and implementing recommended strategies to decrease use. The MWRA has data on both individual and business use of water; there are many ways (water saving faucets, decreasing watering of large business grassy plots, using solar panels to generate energy, water saving toilets), where corporations can make a huge difference in communal water use.
Finally, protecting our local water supply, for example by not allowing clear-cutting of trees in the Quabbin reservoir area. Those trees are essential to filtering the water we drink; clear-cutting of that area in the past weakens the surrounding trees, which are then more susceptible to disease and to wildfires as their roots dry out; it can also lead to soil erosion and leaching of unwanted chemicals into our water supply.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, puts it best: “we need to change to a management mentality: Let’s manage the water we have more wisely. It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible.”
--Brita Lundberg