David Both

It appears that the watering is no longer occurring at 2011 Falls Valley Drive. Thank you for that.

The folks at 2011 Falls Valley Drive are at it again. This morning, October 25 at 0610, I was on my way to work and the automated sprinklers were on again. There were two Raleigh City Police cars in the parking lot and I asked the officers if the violation had been reported. They said that not only had they reported it, but that the location had been reported on multiple occasions in the past by the Police and private citizens. They seemed as upset and frustrated as I that the violations were continuing.

I am sure that they were referring to the fact that this location has been in violation ever since the first restrictions went into effect. I have observed myself the sprinklers operating at around 0545 nearly every weekday morning for the past few weeks as I went to work.

Mea culpa for not reporting it sooner.

I reported a new violation and this time I have copied the City Manager and the head of Raleigh Public Utilities as well as the News and Observer. I would have copied the doctors office but there is no email address on their web site.

I did manage to find a phone number for the OB-GYN after Googling for about 30 minutes and called the office manager. She was not particularly helpful and really tried to blame me for not reporting it to her before reporting it to the authorities. She also said that it was not their responsibility as they only rent at that location. However, as I told her, it is their responsibility to know what is going on at their properties. It certainly is NOT my responsibility to police everyone. I just report the ones I see and I do not go out of my way to find violators.

Besides, at least some of the doctors and nurses that work in such an office should be smart enough to see that the parking lots and sidewalks were wet in the middle of a drought and report this to the landlord.

The City Manager of Raleigh, J Russell Allen, responded very quickly with the following email.

Thanks for letting us know. We do thoroughly follow up and investigate
all reports. Our staff will find out more details about this address
and take any appropriate action.

Sincerely,

J Russell Allen
City Manager

I have added a new page to my Environment section. I call it Raleigh Drought Blog of Shame. I will be posting the addresses – and names if I can get them – of those I see violating the current water restrictions, OR just wasting water even if it is not an “official” violation.

To start I offer up the following:

This morning at 0545 as I was on my way to work I noticed a business using an automated irrigation system to water grass. In addition, much of the water was landing on impermeable surfaces such as sidewalk and parking lot.

2011 Falls Valley Drive

This is off Falls of the Neuse just outside I540 beltline in North Raleigh.

There are three businesses in the building:

An Opthamologist
Nationwide Insurance
Kamm McKenzie, MD, OB-GYN, et. al.

Today we had an Environment Fair at St. Mark’s Episcopal, our church. There were displays about saving energy, water, and other resources.

I had a display about hybrid cars, focusing, of course, on the Toyota Prius because I have one. Read about my Prius.

Several families at St. Marks already have hybrid vehicles. Based on the conversations I had today, several more will be purchasing hybrids very soon.

Today I spent a couple hours working the Peace Booth at the North Carolina State Fair. I have done this for a few years and it is very rewarding.

Each year we get more signatures on our petitions. This year we had a fairly constant flow of people signing them. There were three petitions:

1. Bring home the troops
2. Close the “prison” at Guantanamo
3. End the death penalty

We had the most ever people signing the petition to bring home the troops. Many folks talked to us for a while and some had friends in Iraq or had served there themselves. They were signing in order to bring their friends home safely.

This is an experiment to test out WordPress and see if it will work for several projects I have in mind for home and for work.