Drought Causes City to Require Customer Request Before Serving Water

Fresh Water

As you know, Austin recently experienced one of the driest and hottest summers on record. To lower water usage, the city recently passed a mandate requiring restaurants to only serve water to customers upon request. This begs the question, why is it ever appropriate to serve water to a customer who isn't going to drink it? For any other drink, you must order it specifically for it to be brought to the table, and the water generally gets to you about the same time--with or without a request. To those who actually drink water, it is only a slight inconvenience, which has no negative affect on their dining experience at all. Thus, it would make sense to always require restaurants to only serve water to customers upon request. This would save thousands of gallons of water a year (especially in the three-quarter-full glass of water, which you don't really want, that the waiter brings you just before the check arrives, which I'm sure this happens to everyone occasionally). Conserving water in restaurants would not only save our water, but it would save the restaurants money on water bills. It is a win win situation. We should not just implement this when we have a water shortage, but all the time.