"Nor any drop to drink."

A certain restaurant in town is trying to go to all disposable utensils by the end of the week.  This is in order to save water and comply with a city-mandated 50% reduction in water usage.  Restaurants use a lot of water for washing dishes, cleaning, and other food preparation stuff.  I imagine the expense of disposables will exceed their water bill savings, but the water will be saved, right? 

Tonight they got as far as using disposable cups for beer, and also not serving water unless the customer elected to buy a 75¢ bottle of water they're specially stocking (it's not like they're marking that up a hell of a lot or anything).  If you buy that, or if you buy their regular bottled water, which costs a lot more, I believe you still get the plastic cup.  You also get ice in your water or beverage (of course only if you want it). 

[I hope I'm remembering the salient points of this story correctly.  I may have mis-heard something, or be mis-remembering.  Also I was really drunk, drinking absinthe out of a plastic cup.  Perhaps I hallucinated the whole thing.  I certainly didn't see it.  God knows how many ears and mouths this story has passed through.]

I'm told that a rather large party came into that restaurant tonight.  Someone came in a little early, and asked for water to drink.  He was told (I assume) some form of what was above.  I believe he protested.  I'm further told that when the rest of the large party got there, every single person at the table of 10 or 15 asked for tap water. 

Since the customer is always right, the manager gave them what they wanted.

---

I'm reminded of one of the really bad storms we had 5 or 10 years ago.  Almost the entire city lost power for 4-6 days.  Duke never lost power during the entire event.  2 friends of mine, both PhD candidates who lived off campus, went to Elmo's for breakfast one morning: Elmo's had its power back on, and they didn't.  They went for some hot food, and hopefully to warm up.

The place was packed, which you'd expect.  What you might not expect was that the place was packed with undergraduates who probably had someplace warm to sleep and eat hot food. 

IIRC, my friend saw one of his students.  The student told my friend "What power outage?" 

Sometimes I want to go live out in the wilds of North-Western South Carolina.  I have friends who live there, and I've visited repeatedly.  The people there are much more civilized.  And if your well is deep enough, you may still be able to get water. 

Comments

[durhamfood]

Yep. There was an article in the Chronicle a few days ago where a student was quoted as saying something along the lines 'yes, I heard that there's a drought going on, but it hasn't affect me'.

The distance between Duke and Durham is as large as ever.

By the way, there was another Chronicle article yesterday saying that a new restaurant opened near Erwin Terrace and that another will open soon: TGI Fridays and Chipotle...

Maybe that's a good thing.

[Kelly]

OK I'm staying home for dinner. I don't do plastic forks for a bunch of reasons both aesthetic and environmental.

[durhamfood]

For me, it's a balance of local vs global environment. Plastic forks may be necessary during a drought, because the local environment requires it. For me, that takes priority over global concerns, especially since it's only in the short term.

[Joe]

One could always take a bottle of water and some silverware in a bag, but maybe that's too weird for some people.

I hate plastic forks and knives too. Maybe they'll continue to use real tableware. I think of paper as a renewable resource that rots and eventually winds up back in the dirt where it belongs, even though there's a large amount of energy used in its production. Plastic uses up oilstocks that are both expensive and essentially non-renewable.

I'm a little worried what might happen if (say) every restaurant in the Southeastern US is told to use disposables, or (again say) every restaurant in Durham is told to close. I'm worried that'll happen anyway if the drought gets worse, or if a whole lot of people are unwilling or unable to go out and eat. We could be looking at a huge number of restaurants closing.

What it cones down to is that a lot of people may wind up having to make a lot of hard choices with no definite good outcome. Some of those might be classed as short-term bad and long-term good. Others might just be bad all around. Balancing environmental concerns with the drought is going to be tough. :(

[durhamfood]

I assume that within a couple of months, we'll move to Stage V restrictions:

"Stage V - Stringent Mandatory Conservation. Customers shall be encouraged to observe the conservation measures in Stages I and II and required to continue observing the mandatory requirements in Stages III and IV. The level of the conservation effort shall increase to require the following additional mandatory measures. No person shall:

1. Use water outside a structure except in an emergency involving fire.
2. Operate evaporative air conditioning units which recycle water except during the operating hours of the business.
3. Use any swimming pool or wading pool.
4. Wash any motor vehicle, including commercial washing unless a private well is used.

In addition to the conservation measures enumerated above, customer shall use plates, glasses, cups and eating utensils that are disposable and biodegradable."

They do say biodegradable. Anyone got biodegradable knives? Are we supposed to stop cutting things?

Assuming the situation continues, stage VI will then come into effect:

"Stage VI - Rationing. Customers shall be encouraged to observe the conservation measures in Stages I and II and require to continue observing the mandatory requirements of Stages III, IV and V. The level of the conservation effort shall increase to require the following mandatory measures:

1. Fire protection will be maintained, but where possible, tank trucks shall use raw water.
2. All industrial uses of water shall be prohibited.
3. All other uses of water will be limited to those necessary to meet minimum health and safety needs of the customers as determined by the city manager upon consultation with the director of environmental resources in light of conditions present.

Failure to act in accordance therewith or use of water in any manner or attempt to evade or avoid water rationing restrictions, shall be unlawful. (Ord. No.7028, 1, 7-28-86)"

At that stage, I think restaurants will close.

[Kelly]

In the 18th c. people carried around individual place settings of silverware (sterling of course)beautifully decorated and monogrammed. So the idea of taking one's own fork to a restaurant is not far-fetched. Or we could start using chopsticks.

[barry]

I'm told that a rather large party came into that restaurant tonight. Someone came in a little early, and asked for water to drink. He was told (I assume) some form of what was above. I believe he protested. I'm further told that when the rest of the large party got there, every single person at the table of 10 or 15 asked for tap water.

Lovely.

The issue of not serving water in the restaurant is precisely due to the extra cleaning involved of each glass. I hadn't realized that at first, but once i did, i respected it, and try not to order water unless i really need it. Some people really will, as my mom used to say, cut off their nose to spite their face.

Oh, by the way, we still have not heard back from the city as to whether or not any of the Stage III exempt entities, including Duke University, actually met their mandatory 30% reduction. Hopefully, that will be determined before any Stage IV exemptions are issued.

[Shawn]

@durhamfood, they do make biodegradable knives. we've used them for our summer programs here at Duke (some people here are thinking about the world off the campus grid).
http://www.worldcentric.org/store/cutlery.htm

[durhamfood]

Cool. Spreading the word to restaurants ahead of stage VI restrictions could be a nice idea.

[Fritz]

I wonder if they are still watering the astro turf over at Dook. Why the hell do they do that?

[Joe]

My understanding is that Duke waters the Astroturf to keep the underlying dirt from getting too hard. There's some NCAA standard for the field which mandates that Duke do the watering. Unfortunately, the NCAA doesn't provide water to Durham to implement the standard, or for any other reason, like drinking.

[Michael Bacon]

Okay, so since Joe didn't specify which restaurant, I'm going to have to take stabs in the dark, but Kevin Farmer, the baker at Rue Cler, has been agitating them to go to disposable, biodegradable, celluloid utensils. So if that's the place, they're not plastic, they're the compostable kind that are used at the Eno River Festival the past few yearas.

This is very likely the most environmentally sound way to serve people at a restaurant.

[Phil]

Regarding absinthe, here's a timely article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/dining/05absi.html?hp

I also enjoyed the absinthe moments in EuroTrip.

Regarding Durhamfood's comment on restaurants closing if we go to Stage V restrictions, I'm not quite sure I understand. They'd still be allowed to use water for cooking and for washing per "minimum health and safety needs" right? Or is it the case that restaurants routinely use a lot more water for washing than homes do, and that their business-minimum practices would be more than the "minimum health and safety needs" allowed?

[durhamfood]

I meant that restaurants would close at stage VI, not V.

I think that going out to eat doesn't constitute the maintenance of 'minimum health and safety needs'. Restaurants use tons of water. If water conservation is a matter of such importance as it would be in a stage VI situation, they should close down.

Of course, Duke's campus places will stay open, on the pretense that they are students' principal food source...

[David McMullen]

When I was working at NC State some years ago, the dining hall actually went to disposable (but non-biodegradable, naturally) plates and utensils. Why? Because they cost less than washing the dishes. It not only uses a fair amount of water, you see, but also involves paying people to run the dishwashers. It wound up costing less money to go disposable. But that was only because the cost of emptying the dumpsters was picked up by the university, and so the dining hall didn't have to include it in their accounting. (I know that because I maintained their accounting software for them.)

[Joe]

Michael: Ok, I was deliberately not naming the restaurant. However, just this one time, I'll rise to the bait in a negative fashion: it wasn't Rue Cler. However, I was in Rue Cler last night, and talked to Chris Stinnett. Chris said that both Rue Cler and Pop's are going to try to move to disposable serviceware over the next several days. Chris said that it'll cost more to do so, but again, they're trying to minimize their water usage and not get in a situation where the city limits their water use for them.

David: I wonder about that kind of situation a lot. I see it in health care, where doctors use tools once out of little packets and them throw them away, because it's cheaper than autoclaving them. I think it's crazy. I think some of the costs are hidden, like using up landfill space and throwing away non-renewable resources. The metal in those forceps has to be mined and forged. Throwing it away in a landfill after one use means all that iron is wasted, and will be hard to recover. I know it makes sense on paper, but that kind of "it's cheaper to throw it away" seems to be the kind of mentality that's gotten us in a lot of environmental trouble to start with.

All: A lot of this talk -- whether we should use paper plates or wash china -- is essentially pissing in the wind. What we need right now is rain. If we get back to a normal pattern of rainfall, we'll be ok. If we don't, we won't be ok, no matter what kind of dishes we're using. What we're doing right now is temporizing, and trying to make our existing water last as long as possible. That's fine, and probably worth throwing away a few plastic forks in the interim. Right now the limiting resource is water, so that's the one we need to conserve.

[durhamfood]

Agreed, but to be honest, no matter how much water we conserve as individual consumers, the major consumers are industrial. We have 7 1/2 weeks or so of water left, and it's unlikely we're going to change by more than a couple of days by conserving water.

That's not to say we shouldn't do so anyway. It's a good habit to get into.

[BryanZ]

The drought is a hot topic of discussion on campus right now, actually. Just the other day I had hand sanitizing gel dropped off at my apartment to limit water usage. There have been numerous campus-wide emails soliciting ideas to help cut water usage. I personally have been in discussions regarding the adoption of disposable silverware (which has been done) and getting rid of trays (which I was very much against) in our main dining halls to reduce water usage. Some campus eateries are charging for tap water, too.

Something like 50% of our water usage goes to the hospital, so it's difficult to cut down there. Saving lives is more important than saving water, I would think.

Joe is right about the NCAA regulations requiring the watering of the artificial turf.

It's easy to attack Duke and its students without knowing the full story. We've been down this path many times before.

[durhamfood]

If the NCAA requires it, the solution is simple: stop playing on those turfs. As usual, Duke values its own, especially sports teams, over the good of the larger community.

Duke is doing some things to reduce consumption, but nowhere near what it is legally required to do. We are in stage IV water restrictions, requiring a cut of 50% in water usage.

By the way, Bryan, I've been at Duke longer than you have, so please don't play the 'misunderstood Duke' game.

[durhamwalkingdog]

as much as I don't like Duke, they are being very aggressive and have taken the water situation seriously. Much more so then the city imo.

They have had committees working on it and have set aside significant money for capital improvements that will further save water. By example, they are switching all mops in the hospital over to microfiber versions (saves 90% water).

I think what we'll see from this is Duke moving towards an independent source as it does with power.

[barry]

Duke was required by statute to reduce overall water consumption by 30% in return for getting an exemption from the Stage III ban on outdoor watering. I (and a couple of other folks) have been asking the city for going on two months whether or not that reduction has been achieved. Under Stage IV, entities receiving an exemption will be required to reduce overall use by 50%.

Questions that remain to be answered, in addition to whether or not the reduction is happening are: What is the baseline from which the reduction is to be calculated? Regarding Duke specifically, is the enitre University a single billing entity as far as the city is concerned, or is the hospital separate from, say, residence halss and the athletic department?

As far as Duke creating its own water supply, how do you imagine that might happen? Is there room on campus for a reservoir? Is there a privately owned river somewhere that can be dammed to create a reservoir, along with enough contiguous right of way to bring that water to Duke? Like it or not, Duke is part of Durham when it comes to water supply; which means that all members of the campus community need to be doing their part to reduce consumption at this time.

[durhamwalkingdog]

I meant independent storage to fall back on, they can collect and store rainwater should they invest in the infrastructure as well as create a water reclamation process so that they aren't drawing as much potable water from the city. There is already at least one cistern on campus.

btw, I am not speaking for Duke - just my perspective as a Duke community member

[Stew]

Backyard chickens would solve all these problems.

[barry]

funny, i was going to post the same comment on this thread.