HUMOR: TOP 10 WAYS TO CONSERVE WATER IN THE KEYS

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. 

Such was the case in much of the Florida Keys last week, when residents from Tavernier to Key West turned on their showers, sinks or garden hoses and got nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Toilets would flush, but just once. Then came a troubling silence where the sound of a tank refilling should have been.

Multiple water main breaks in the pipeline that brings drinking water from the mainland to the Florida Keys interrupted the freshwater flow to most of the Keys for about 12 hours as crews worked to repair the beleaguered 40-something-year-old water pipe. It was the third such water main break within a week, with the first two affected mainly folks in the Upper Keys and forced a few schools and government offices to close.

The outage cost the Keys a bunch of its stored reserves of fresh drinking water, prompting utility officials to plead with residents and to PLEASE conserve water. It’s a precious resource. And until we can start turning ocean water into drinking water, we need to rein in our usage. No absurdly long showers. No automatic sprinklers. No obsessive boat washing. Always here to help, the Keys Weekly offers our own…

TOP 10 WAYS TO CONSERVE WATER IN THE FLORIDA KEYS

10. Serve your margaritas and mojitos “neat.”

9. Disconnect your bidet and get back to basics by repurposing this newspaper.

8. Communal showers.

7. Look up. Those green things in the palm trees have healthy, drinking water.

6. Fill your waterbed with pudding.

5. Instead of holy water, try locally owned Bombora vodka.

4. Saltwater baths. (Joy and Dawn still foam in the ocean. Ask a sailor.)

3. Use your neighbor’s garden hose to wash your boat, car or golf cart.

2. Boil pasta in your hot tub

  1. Boycott “Avatar: The Way of Water.”