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  • From: "Amanda Peck" <ap615@hotmail.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Cattle and water
  • Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:41:18 -0500


The amount per flush sounds way way way too high. Don't think that's the amount a standard toilet tank holds--maybe three gallons--less than five, certainly. Lower flow toilets are now mandated. Composting toilets are certainly available.

People around here do feed hay to their cattle in the wintertime, and in the summer when it hasn't rained. The area generally gets enough rain to make at least one hay crop in the fields that the cattle aren't grazing right then. So there's not much irrigation of hay fields. But that may be because people don't sell much hay. There IS a farm the next county over where I've seen the irrigation sprayers going at noon on a bright summer's day--putting the water in the air to evaporate.

It's probably true that our water comes straight from a river, not from a well. But particularly on the Ogalalla aquifer, it may be more than our grandchildren will wish we had consumed.

I've read somewhere that the water usage for alfalfa irrigation in California is the biggest use of water in the state. Not sure if that's true, but....

Even if it isn't, it's still true that irrigation water also has to be counted as water used in raising the cows.
............
Ryan Albringer wrote (snipped into nothingness--including another part I'm replying to):
Considering these figures per unit produced, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the average toilet consuming something like 20 or 30 gallons of potable water per flush.






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