Drought brings special challenges to dry and desert climate dwellers. Droughts impact the available water, making it scarce to completely unavailable for potentially long periods. Water is necessary for drinking, growing the vegetables, raising livestock, bathing, cooking, cleaning, laundry and sewage transport and treatment. To ensure continued water availability during dry times and get the most of your available water, here are four ways to do your part in a drought.

Water-Saving Behaviors

The simplest, and cheapest, way to save water is changing your habits surrounding regular water-using activities. Washing cars with a self-closing nozzle, cleaning driveways with a broom, turning the water off while brushing teeth or soaping up in the shower, watering plants in cooler times of the day, and composting over using the garbage disposal all greatly reduce water usage.

Water-Saving Technology

Although it is simple to change behaviors, it is not always easy. This is where technology comes to the rescue. Using a smart controller in yard and garden irrigation can save water and money. Smart controllers run your irrigation timers while syncing with weather monitoring systems to turn off your system or delay watering on rainy days. Installing low-flow faucets (including aerators), toilets, shower heads and drip irrigation systems all can work together with a smart controller to ensure you are using the least amount of water for your regular activities.

Implement Drought-Tolerant Landscaping

In addition to delivering the water more efficiently with technology, using nature can help us save water too. Removing grass, plants requiring large amounts of water and non-natives from your lawn and garden, while replacing them with native and drought-tolerant species can dramatically decrease your water demand.

Re-Using Water, aka Greywater

Installing high-tech greywater systems, or even saving the cold water from a slow-heating shower in a bucket for the garden effectively recycles the water you use to be used again. Re-using bath, laundry and dish-water for the lawn and garden can greatly reduce your water demand while increasing the utility of the water you already regularly use. 

The demand we place on the water system in dry climates and deserts during droughts determines how much is left for the environment, other people and the community of individuals around us who all depend on that water into the future. To ensure you, your neighbors and the environment have the water needed reduce your demand while using water more wisely and efficiently through the many methods available to us all.