Oh Brother!

With my Sunday paper this week, I received a pack of bright yellow door tags, similar to the ones that FedEx leaves behind when you're not home to sign for an important package. Only these door tags are not from FedEx, they're from the Water Authority, and they are big, yellow, and totally obnoxious.

I am supposed to hang these on the doors of my neighbors when I notice they are wasting water. In theory, I should check one of the following boxes:

• Your sprinklers are watering the pavement
• Your sprinklers were on during the rain
• You have a broken sprinkler
• Your sprinklers are on every day
• Your sprinklers are on during the day

Each of these misdeeds then has further explanation about how the offender can reduce water usage with a little fix-it tip.

As I often say in my blog - don't get me wrong! I'm not opposed to water conservation in this arid metropolis known as San Diego. But I have a real problem with this "Big Brother"-style request. I don't want to go around hanging tags on my neighbors' doors, nor would I want someone to do this to me.

I thought about this long and hard, because at first I wasn't really sure why the yellow water tags bothered me so much. I mean, if I saw someone beating on his or her child or witnessed a car crash, I would try to intervene as best I could. So why wouldn't I want to come to the rescue of our water??

I finally came to the conclusion that it's the anonymity that seems so creepy and borderline Orwellian. If I have neighbors who are pouring hundreds of gallons of water down the sewer, I would hope I have the backbone to go up to them and politely ask if they've noticed that they have a broken sprinkler head!

I considered anonymously mailing the tags back to the Water Authority along with a note recommending where they shove 'em. But instead, I took the environmentally conscious route - I recycled them.