[tharkun__]

Also, to be fair, most people here on HN will probably go with their own habits: They'd be great stewards of nature. They don't smoke / would always carry their butts out, never throw out any trash, pick up whatever they might accidentally loose even the smallest piece. Even the ones they didn't notice falling out. Definitely nothing that could ever start a fire!

Governments / park administration on the other hand have to calculate with the worst of the worst (or at the very least what seems to be the "general public" in many instances now).

If you were in their shoes and had to make that kind of calculation would you really come to a different conclusion?

Comparison from my town: Our municipal water supply uses ground water. Personally we've always let our lawn get brown during hot spells in summer. Why waste water I could drink either this year or in future years on a green lawn?

Yet most of my neighbors would water their lawn, either manually or automatically. Same around most of town.

I applaud the municipality for enacting strict watering bans and water use restrictions including patrols! It's an inconvenience sometimes but overall it's better for all of us. This years it's pretty dry and it's been a few years that we've had these enacted and I'm noticing a much higher number of brown and dry lawns around me, which super awesome to see actually! Except for where the septic leach fields are. That's always lush green for all of us! :)

[nothercastle]

There is almost always enough water to water your lawn but you would have to cut off industrial water waste/use and cities won’t do that. So you can’t water your lawn but Coca-Cola down the block wastes thousands of cubic feet a day without a care

[tharkun__]

There's no Coca-Cola down the block from here (nor a Nestle bottling plant ;)). Nor any high water usage industries (no real "industries" at all actually). We're one of a few towns in the area with municipal wells tapping an aquifer.

The next big city does not take water from an aquifer at all but from a river. One that's also currently lower on water than usual, which is not great because upstream cities put their sewage in there and that city does the same "downstream" (which will add to the problem cities even further downstream are going to have that also use the river water).

[baggy_trough]

Inefficiencies like this are due to not charging a proper market price for water.

[nothercastle]

Yeah that’s true though it can get problematic when you charge market rate and price people out. Say like when a data center moves to town and messes up electricity prices for everyone