Letters to the Editor
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Rivers Going Dry
Too late Andrew. The big sacrifices are on their way. And when they hit hardest, the nation will be way too broke to ease them.
Sorry.
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This is how it begins...
First, we see localized breakdowns. Not all at the same time, not all in the same place, not all even quite like each other, and they are the warning signs. The fires in SoCal, the water shortages in the Southeast, levee failures in New Orleans (coupled to wetland loss and overall subsidence, a very bad combination), all of these and more are pointing towards a grim future.
You think it's bad we went to war in the Middle East over oil? Just wait. We can adapt to less oil. We can even make a transition to no oil when we have to - it won't be easy, true, but it will be doable.
Anyone want to try and live without water?
And population is part of the problem, like it or not. There is a fairly set amount of water and it's going to serve an ever-increasing population. Simple math, really - less for everyone.
Development has been catastrophic, and its consequences will only worsen with time. Any local or state pol worth keeping would impose an outright long-term watering ban on lawns (including corporate complexes) and golf courses, lifeted only when reservoirs return to 120% of "seasonal normal" levels. Violation would be penalized by having their watering systems removed at the violator's expense (the lawn death penalty) as well as fines.
And as bad as it is in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, it's going to be far worse in places even less prepared to adapt. Of course, they're far, far away, so it's easy to forget about them.
All I ask is for the dynamite and acetylene concessions when the pipelines are built to drain the Great Lakes for the convenience of the "Sun Belt". Ought to be a lucrative business, that...
Note: The preceding graf was humor...
Get used to it, folks, someday we'll all look back on this as the good old days.
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Sacrifices?
While the city of Atlanta is largely liberal, the rest of the Greater Atlanta Area is largely Republican. Just this week the city commission of Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta, voted to allow watering of new "professionally installed landscapes," changing one of the new water restrictions. So while you can plant a new yard, you can't water it unless you paid to have it installed by professionals. So is Atlanta making sacrifices? Hardly. North of the city I see numerous signs proclaiming "Irrigation by Well Water!" I see new yards being installed in front of new houses that are not going to sell anytime soon. Builders destroy our native forest canopy and rip out all the native, drought resistant plants, to install engineered grass and trees that require huge amounts of water. Everybody talks a good game, but the bottom line is everybody in the suburbs is going to water their grass and have their custom landscaping.
This is not the first year the lakes in Atlanta have been low. They have been getting lower every year. Nobody, except the idiot Sonny Perdue and the local GOP politicians, were surprised. The Chairman of the Cobb County Commission, Sam Olens, another GOP idiot, has been proclaiming that overbuilding has nothing to do with our water problems. He is also the guy that makes sure builders are allowed to continue burning landscape waste because it is the cheapest way for it to be disposed of, no matter how many citizens oppose it for health or environmental reasons.
Georgia today is a lot like Florida of the '70's. Builders can do anything they want, and this will probably continue until the land literally cannot support it. When the water dries up, the land is ruined and builders and politicians leave with all the money in their pockets, we the people will be left to try and salvage what we can.
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@gttim
While the city of Atlanta is largely liberal, the rest of the Greater Atlanta Area is largely Republican. Just this week the city commission of Alpharetta, a suburb of Atlanta, voted to allow watering of new "professionally installed landscapes," changing one of the new water restrictions. So while you can plant a new yard, you can't water it unless you paid to have it installed by professionals. So is Atlanta making sacrifices? Hardly
There is a complete ban on "maintenance" watering. That's not a sacrifice? And the Alpharetta ordinance was newsworthy in that it is bucking the trend for the Atlanta area (of which Alpharetta makes up a tiny, and yes, irritating, percentage) as a whole. Entire counties are banning installation watering as well, meaning that professional landscaping -- which employs over 80,000 people (legally) in the area -- is in fact the only industry so far that has been ordered out of business.
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The future politics of water
As a resident of a Great Lakes state, I've been watching the situation in the Southeast with interest. However, what's happening there is an anomaly. It's the Southwest I'm worried about.
Unfortunately, I think the day will come when people in Arizona and Southern California will demand water from the Great Lakes. Clearly, others are anticipating this too, which has resulted in the creation of the Great Lakes Compact:
http://www.glc.org/about/glbc.html
In a more rational world, people would live in areas with plentiful water, but in America we long ago decided that we'd rather indulge in the fantasy that desert ecosystems can support the same density of human life that wetter climates can. It would appear we want to avoid rain and snow, but not the water itself. Go figure.
The reason I think all this could get ugly is that places like California, Arizona, and other arid regions already outweigh the humble Midwest in terms of electoral votes - a trend which is accelerating every year. When push comes to shove, I fear that they'll be able to get their paws on Great Lakes water - even if it's for the absurd purposes of making golf courses green in Phoenix.