Tarrant County doing better conserving water

Congratulations to Tarrant County for not wanting Mad Max: Fury Road to be a viable future.

Texas Living Waters Project has released its annual Texas Water Conservation Scorecard, and Fort Worth, Arlington, Hurst, Keller, Carrollton, North Richland Hills all ranked in the top 15 in the state of the 126 “large and medium-size retail public water utilities in Texas.”

“Most cities in North Texas heretofore considered wasteful have begun to turn the corner,” Ken Kramer, water resources chairman of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club told the Star-Telegram’s Bill Hanna. “Fort Worth is among those cities. One of the most impressive things Fort Worth has done is adopting twice-a-week outdoor watering.”

Now residents can understand why the “lawn whisperer” invaded our commutes with his billboards and safari outfit. He wants us to pay attention to our lawns, but ultimately save water.

Well, it’s working, Mr. Lawn Whisperer, so kudos to you.

We all know that water is that precious commodity, the thing we literally can’t live without, but we sometimes seem to forget to keep our water usage in check.

Water, with its sheer coolness factor, never goes out of style, and people always want to know where it is and how to get it. They want it in their daily lives but don’t really show respect when it shows up.

Here’s looking at you, neighbor with the broken sprinkler head.

But not you, Tarrant County. You’re showing water that you are proud of it and would like to see it stick around.

You check your leaky faucets and make sure to water the lawn at appropriate times and even take advantage of the recent rains and let it do your lawn care for you.

Don’t start celebrating yet. Just because we are not in drought conditions anymore and y’all are doing better at conserving water, it doesn’t mean you should start slacking off.

We are still on track for a record hot summer and a major water shortfall by 2070. In the proposed 2017 State Water Plan, officials project a shortfall of 456 billion gallons in the next 50 years.

That is more than five times the volume of the third largest reservoir in the state.

All this water conservation will be needed, even with the building of the controversial Marvin Nichols reservoir.

Keep up the good work Tarrant County, and maybe we can get that shortfall number down to a less alarming number.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 6:24 PM with the headline "Tarrant County doing better conserving water."