El Niño brought far too little moisture to the south of California—where all the people live.

We need to start thinking about what drought, as climate change makes it worse, will mean to us on a day-to-day basis.

I thought about using the toilet—flush toilets will need to go. We can get back to outhouses or maybe compost toilets like the ones used on boats.

We use the toilet maybe four times a day for both functions. Think of 39 million people using that amount of water daily and what we will be forced to do to save that precious water.

For a new low-flush 1.5-gallon tank toilet, that’s 234 million gallons per day, or 7.4 billion gallons per month saved with outhouses or compost toilets.

Diablo Canyon will soon make and send desalinated water to local cities. The carbon free electricity Diablo Canyon contributes to desalination does not cause more climate change and drought.

We need more nuclear plants contributing to making more desalinated water for our state, and we need to build them quickly.

SLO County supervisors say Lopez Lake will be dry in two years. 

-- William Gloege - Santa Maria