A drought is a period of time where water is scarce causing lakes, ponds, and rivers to dry up a little or completely. Right now, Californians are unfortunately experiencing one of the harshest droughts in record. Even though the whole state is experiencing the pain, Southern Californians are getting the worst of it.

On another note, due to the New York Times, in the next few years, the oceans and seas are supposed to rise up 16 to 20 feet. This is because the drought our planet is facing right now will cause 90% of the glaciers to melt, thus flowing into rivers and streams and eventually emptying out into the oceans and seas.

We must spread awareness about our current climate, and the lack of knowledge of how to help isn’t benefitting us at all. Although we are in a drought, there are many ways we can conserve water and help our current situation.
One of the most obvious ones is leaks. Leaks are almost everywhere; your sink, your toilet, your faucet, public bathrooms, and drinking fountains. If there is a leak, there are many ways to resolve this problem. For example, if the leak is inside of your house, then you can either call a company to fix it for you or you can fix it yourself. However, if the leak is in a public park or restaurant, then you should immediately report it to the owner of the place.

Another big reason of why we have a shortage of water is just us not caring. Sometimes, we put the sprinkler on when the sun is out or just about when the sun is gonna come out. Because of this, most of the water which is supposed to be absorbed by the plants gets evaporated. Also, many people now hose down their cars instead of using the towel and water method.

The final big reason of why we are making matters worse than it already is is that we flush the toilet or urinal too often. Every flush ranges from 2 to 7 gallons of water, and as of right now, we all flush at least 5 times every day. Some people do more! This means that every year, each person flushes a total of at least 2336 gallons of water to 12775 gallons of water. That’s a lot! Instead, if you chose to, then you could flush every other time instead of every time. This can save several thousand gallons of water.

Although there are many big reasons, the little reasons are the ones that hurt us the most.

The first one is us accidentally leaving the faucet on after we wash our hands. “IBM has put together a series of infographics that highlights alarming statistics about just how much water is wasted due to leaking faucets. According to the data, a faucet that drips one drop per second, would waste 27,000 gallons of water annually.” Also, according to IBM, up to 60% of wasted water is from this cause too.

In addition to the faucet problem, some people just don’t appreciate bottled water and drinking fountains. For example, one day when I was shooting hoops in Jollyman Park, my friends and I saw some adults using freshly bottled water to wash their hands. The next week, I happened to see both adults and children use the drinking fountain as a faucet. This shows that people are extremely lazy and will do anything to conserve energy. This leads to my last point of stating that we are getting lazier and lazier.

Is it seriously that hard to just take less than half a minute to walk to the bathroom and wash your hands or are we just too complacent with our technology that we think we are too good for the little things? I have witnessed too many people using bottled water as a faucet, water fountains as a faucet, and people too lazy to recycle just because the  recycling bin hole is smaller. Because of this lazy action, we are compromising our own human principles in order to conserve our energy, but the next time you do so, ask yourself, do I really need to save my energy? If so, what and why am I saving it for?

If we are still wondering why we are in this drought, then we must double check our actions and clean-up after ourselves. If we do so, then we may be able to overcome this disaster together. Remember, it is never too late to take action now.