[SustainableTompkins] why save water?

[Jon Bosak]

Margaret McCasland wrote:
 > But we are very lucky here in the city of Ithaca; most of the city's
 > water is surface water on its way to the lake via gravity, all it
 > does is take a detour through our houses. (However it is getting
 > contaminated on the way.)  So water per se isn't the issue.

It will be if the proponents of growth in the county are
successful in the effort to shut down the City's water treatment
plant and expand Bolton Point so that all the City's water comes
from the lake.  There are energy aspects to this, too; see the
position paper prepared by TCLocal last year:

    http://www.ibiblio.org/tcrp/policy/wtp/

 > But effects on the lake do matter.  All those chemicals add up
 > once they get to the lake, where they concentrate over time.

Yup.  But it's not clear that Common Council understands this.

Jon