San Diego needs to conserve water.

If you like it then you should put a lid on it

By Martin Zazueta

The title of very article will most likely make you reminisce on Beyonce's hit song, "Single Ladies", but it helps illustrate a good point. We as San Diegans must do our part to deal with the water shortage that's facing California, by setting examples ourselves and promoting water friendly behavior.

We must not fret over the large-scale problems or become pessimistic about the issue, feeling that we will never be able to make the huge difference we wanted. In times of peril we must look confidently towards the future, finding that any improvement no matter how small is a major improvement as opposed to no improvement.

There's an idea I would like the readers to remember, it was aired on a 'Going Green' episode of My name is Earl, and it was that one should not “think locally, act globally” but should instead “think globall, act locally”. This simply means that we dont have to change the whole world to make a difference: just by merely changing ourselves and our surroundings we can make a difference. And water is one of those little things we can change about ourselves that can have an impact. We may not realize it but there many and very simple actions we can do to save water, for example:

• Shorter Showers: we all enjoy long showers and need them but do we really need 20 minute showers? Just by cutting back on showers by couple minutes will help us save a large quantities of water, because the average shower head uses 5 gallons per minute (http://www.deq.state.ok.us/mainlinks/uls/newsletters/ULSnews1.pdf.). So by cutting back lets say 5 minutes in the shower we can up to 25 gallons of water per day, 175 per week, 750 per month and 9,125 per year and it would be 18,250 if you cut down to a 10 minute shower.

• Another thing we can do (though it will probably wont be as easy) is not to wait for the hot water, for again every minute the shower is on we lose 5 gallons, so if you have the will power to encourage yourself to get used to cold water (I mean we live in America's finest city and it is summer , do we really need a hot shower in the morning or at night when our the weather will be nice and warm?)

That is all for now, but there will be more to come on water tips and actions we can all take to help out with the water crisis, and always remember if you like it then you really should put a lid on it.