LOS ANGELES — Pssst. Ready to water that beautiful lush lawn of yours? The one that’s the envy of the entire neighborhood.
If you live in Southern California, you’d better wait until after midnight. Preferably on a cloudy, new-moon night during a power outage when it’s so dark even night-vision goggles won’t give away your position. Otherwise, you could wind up the star of the latest drought-shaming video posted on YouTube or Twitter.
“Yeah, I put your address out there. The world is watching a lot more,” says Tony Corcoran, one of several people who spend their spare time these days canvassing the tony communities of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and elsewhere, looking for people wasting water during the worst California drought in recent memory.
Corcoran estimates he’s put up on YouTube more than 100 videos of water-wasters, with their addresses.
Others tweet out addresses and photos of water scofflaws, using hashtags such as #DroughtShaming. Still others are snapping smartphone photos of them and sending them to authorities.
Dan Estes, a Los Angeles real estate broker, has gone so far as to build his own free app, DroughtShame, that records the time and place where people see waste.
He doesn’t believe in outing people to the world. Instead, those who use his app send the information and a photo to him, and he forwards it to the water agency.
“I drought shamed the preschool next to my apartment,” he said. “Timer was off on their sprinklers. Those things were on for five hours.”
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