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You don't like to waste water, so you carefully reuse the liquid from your bath and sink to quench the thirst of your backyard garden or your wilting flowers along the walk.

Recycling water from baths and washing dishes to water gardens is illegal. Dumb or a needed health precaution? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

That makes you a good conservationist.

It also makes you a lawbreaker.

State law prohibits the use of so-called "gray water" for watering plants or in other ways aimed at conserving water.

It's a policy aimed at preventing the spread of disease, but it's also one that some say might be unnecessarily restrictive and needs to be re-evaluated in the current drought.

Bill Holman, an environmental policy specialist at Duke University,

said it might be time for another look at the state's gray-water rules.

"Drought or no drought, we've got to make more efficient use of our water resources," he said.

"We need to explore all the options."

The idea that reusing that water is illegal doesn't sit well with some who work hard to cut back on their water use.

Greensboro resident Caroline Maness uses bathwater on her garden and said she was unaware that was prohibited.

"Come and arrest me," she said. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of."

Maness takes care to conserve, using barrels to catch and store rain, and is annoyed when she sees residents using wells to water their lawns.

Mainly, she said, she doesn't think she's hurting anyone.

"I'm not putting it on anybody else's anything," she said. "In this country, people get hyper clean."

As a practical matter, enforcement of the gray-water rules in cases such as Maness' is rare.

Laura Leonard, a spokeswoman for the state's division of environmental health, said enforcement falls to county health departments.

In Guilford County, environmental health manager Carl Parsons said he can't recall pursuing any cases where someone was using gray water for conservation purposes.

A more common occurrence is when someone diverts gray water from a septic system to prolong its life, he said. In that case, the department will work to stop that, he said.

But the use of gray water for irrigation would be difficult to enforce, and the health department isn't going out of its way to sniff out violations, he said.

"We're not standing around looking at everybody," he said.

Still, that doesn't mean it's a good idea, health officials say.

"Gray water is considered wastewater, and it does contain chemicals, nutrients and pathogens," Leonard said.

The water could attract animals or insects, which could then get sick from any pathogens and possibly spread the disease, according to her department.

Leonard said the hazard depends on the situation. A family with young children in diapers might be different than a single guy in an apartment.

"It's completely relative," she said. "But it is considered wastewater, and there is the likelihood that you could get sick."

But some say the question is whether it should be considered exactly the same as sewage.

Holman said a good idea would be to weigh the risks of using gray water against the benefits.

Maybe there's a simple way to treat the water to make it safe for outdoor use, or maybe it makes sense to treat different shades of gray water differently, he said.

In any case, given the growing population pressure on the state's water resources, it's time to take a harder look at policies governing water use, Holman said.

"I'm sure that the current policy was enacted at a time of more abundant water and fewer people," he said.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jhardin@news-record.com