A traveling slip-and-slide as long as three football fields plans to come to Austin later this year, according to its owners, whose announcement has delighted many Austin Bloggers and Facebook users. But organizers have encountered some of the issues that led Los Angeles to reject the water slide late last year. Austin is wrestling with a lingering drought, and last fall it declared the festival-fatigued central city area off limits for additional events, such as Slide the City, that would require streets to be closed.

In light of the city’s years-long effort to promote conservation, the event “does at first glance raise some concern about recreational water use during this time of drought,” according to a statement from the Austin Water Utility.

Concerns over water conservation seem to be overblown as the slide’s owners claim that it uses less water than the average backyard pool and that much of that water can be recycled.  But, let’s be pure and reject this.  It may not be much fun, but we will feel good about ourselves.