An anonymous-but-concerned citizen offers her totally rational, reasoned response.
The fountains were the first to go. “Decorative,” they called them. No need to keep those going.
Then we lost the golf courses. An afternoon at the club range ends on the putting brown now. Afterward, in the dining room, we have to ask for water for the table. Ask. For tap water.
It would seem we are in a drought.
Apparently it’s been carrying on for a few years now. Global warming, they’re saying. Lakes are emptying, or something. And supposedly Southern California is actually a desert? I beg to differ. We wouldn’t have noticed at all, had our annual February ski trip to Tahoe not been ruined by the season getting cut short.
How were we to know? Well, O.K, we had heard something about watering days. I did tell the gardeners to tone it down a bit (but not too much—we pay them weekly, not hourly). And we did notice when the market raised the price of organic avocados, though we assumed that was because of a workers strike, or something.
Still, it’s not like anyone really got in trouble for giving the calla lilies an extra midnight soak (or two). And the estates along Alpine Drive just look so much happier when the grass is freshly hydrated, the bushes trimmed to geometric perfection. What do they want us to do, sell our houses? Chop down our lemon trees? Turn our acres of gorgeous greenery into a bunch of sand and rocks and tumbleweeds? If we wanted a dirt heap, we’d move to Idaho.
Anyway, our initial, very generous concessions weren’t enough. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past,” is what the governor said, if you can believe it. Now we’re being told we have to reduce not just our sprinkler timers but also the rest of our water consumption by a third. And, excuse me? East L.A. only has to cut back by 10 percent? Thanks, Obama.
So it was the fountains (except the ones that recycle their filthy water—the Electric Fountain and its tourist-feet sludge are, tragically, safe). Then the golf courses. Now the grotto waterfalls in the neighbors’ courtyard are going still. They’re after our pools, too. Now, we can only refill them once a week, but soon they’ll be having us drain them, no doubt. Hot tubs too.
Before you know it, the pool at the Chateau will be emptied, too, and we’ll all be waiting in line, empty blue basins gathering dead leaves at home, to take five-minute butterfly stroke turns at the Beverly Hills High School pool. They can’t take that one away, too, can they? It’s educational.
And all the while, the yuppies over in Downtown are allowed to use that filthy waterslide from last summer to their hearts’ content. I bet they expect us to cut back to just one shower a day, too. And reuse our towels. Nauseating. Just disgusting. The showers and sauna and towel service at the Equinox, mercifully, are still available at regular volume.
And then—oh, then—I heard they’re coming for our almonds. Obviously, no one up in Sacramento or wherever has even heard of paleo. What do they expect us to do? Drink cow’s milk again? Resort to peanuts? Please. Even the cavemen didn’t have to eat peanuts. The cavemen could have all the almonds their flat, furry little heads desired.
These people think rebates are going to get us to rip up our lawns? All two square acres of them? For cacti? I guess it would be mildly amusing to Pinterest a free succulent garden. I was driving home from my volunteer work in Los Feliz the other day, and they’ve got the most adorable little arrangements outside their boutiques—but when it comes down to it, succulents are so bourgeois. An agave plant, while fine in my mojito, is the botanical equivalent of the Gap. The 100-year-old willow tree in our front yard? Chanel. Which would you prefer to drive? Besides, cacti make terrible topiaries.
Still, a $500 fine for watering a lawn on the wrong day? A rather expensive price tag for pristine groundskeeping, but it doesn’t seem so bad a punishment, really. We pay twice that for Harper’s private dance lessons every month. Besides, it wouldn’t be our fault anyway if we were to use just a little more water than everyone else. We’re paying for it, after all; let the water company deal with the fines.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” that public works woman said on the radio. She has no idea.
Devon Maloney is a pop culture journalist living in Los Angeles.
from ffffff http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/04/beverly-hills-drought-parody
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