California, and the Western United States more generally, experience a vast volatility in terms of rainfall.
With an ever-expanding population, and droughts and dry spells seemingly increasing in frequency, government entities are desperately searching for solutions. In the past, the solution in times of crisis was a mandatory cut back order for the affected areas population. This cut back order would mandate the reduction of water use by everyone in the effected area by an x percentage i.e., 20 percent.
However, this system was inherently unfair as it failed to take into account a number of important factors
for example the water use of the said property before the emergency measures came into use, the amount of people living on the property, the amount and type of vegetation, etc.
To illustrate the problem, I will use two families living next door to one another.
One family is eco friendly and environmentally conscious. They had, prior to the emergency measures coming into place, replaced their lawn with drought tolerant and native plants. They pay attention to the length of their showers and never wash their cars at home because a car wash uses significantly less water, on average, than washing your car at home.
Consequently, this family is already water efficient, and will not be able to, and shouldn’t need to, reduce their consumption by a further 20 percent.
The family next-door on the other hand, is the opposite of their neighbors. They water their lawn daily, they wash their cars at home 2 times a week, take long showers, etc. This family, in simply reducing the frequency with which they water their lawn, and washing their cars at a car wash, will quite easily be able to reduce their consummation by 20 percent or more while the family that was already efficiency will struggle to be able to meet the mark.
The injustice is evident.
The second family was only able to reduce their consummation so easily by 20 percent because they used far more water than they should have been able to prior to the emergency while the first family will be punished for having been efficient all along.
Eagle Aerial has worked diligently to solve the Water crisis in California and hopes to serve as an example as rarity of water will be one of the defining traits of this century.
One can see the issue rearing its head all over the world, from Ethiopia damming the Nile which will significantly diminish the quantity of water flowing down steam to countries such as Egypt and the same problem with Turkey’s damming of the Euphrates, to increasingly severe droughts in places like South Africa and Australia, Water is set to become a global problem in the 21st century and Eagle Aerial Solutions’ avant garde ideas put into practice in it’s new program, WaterView, is set to make a splash in a big way.
WaterView takes numerous factors into account, the rainfall in a specific area, the quantity and type of vegetation, how many people live on the property, etc, in order to create an allocation to determine how much water should be being used. This allocation changes from month to month, depending on the season and whether conditions, and adjusts for dry spells as well as periods of drought.
WaterView will allow districts to target those customers that are over-consuming, while being able to set up a new payment structure that rewards the saving of water while imposing fees on those who overuse, as opposed to the current model in which water districts profit in a strictly linear manner: selling more water equals more profit.
As the Water crisis evolves, Eagle will continue to innovate solutions to help with WaterView being but the beginning.
