Letters to the Editor
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Idiot Governor
Part of the problem is undoubtedly the idiot they currently have as governor in GA. I heard him talking about this on NPR and he stated that he didn't think the endangered species act was intended to provide resources for animals over the needs of humans. Of course, this is exactly what the endangered species act is for. It was passed to prevent human expansion and resource use from destroying entire species of animals. His kind of interpretation is just what you can expect from the modern no-nothing party: Republicans.
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That's a lot of snow
That’s right let’s scrap the Endangered Species Act, that’s the problem, silly bivalves drinking up all of Cobb County's water. After all that water is needed by people… people like the ones who run the Stone Mountain water park that as recently as this October was planning on using some of that water… New York Times 10/23/07 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/us/23drought.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
“On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.”
The mind reels.
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I was stationed
in Alaska in the late 70s and in Texas in the early 80s. It was common to see bumper stickers that read "Drive 85 and freeze a yankee." Any suggestion that a state rich in a critical resource (oil) might have an obligation to their fellow citizens in other states was met with shouts of "Socialist" and "Commie" and "fuck'em - the oil is ours."
Well well well. How times have changed. The Great Lakes states should be worried that the southern states are going to try a water grab. Perhaps the citizens of the Great Lakes states could dig out the quotes and arguements that Texas, Oklahoma, et al used to fleece their northern neighbors; substitute water for oil, and publish them.
And by the way, Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia border the ocean. They can build desalinization plants and take water from the ocean. Expensive but doable. And they can raise the cost of water to encourage conservation. What they should not be allowed to do is steal the critical resources of another state.
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@gttim
"...everybody in the suburbs is going to water their grass and have their custom landscaping."
This statement isn't accurate or fair. I live in an apartment in the suburbs, so there's no grass-watering for me anyway, but my parents do have their own home (yes, in the suburbs, and yes they have custom landscaping) and they haven't watered their grass at all during the ban (which has been in place off and on for YEARS). None of their neighbors have, either. If anyone did, they'd definitely be reported.
At the same time, I have also seen those annoying "Irrigation with well water" signs and think they're total BS. A drought is a drought, right?
My point: Let's try not to use generalizations in discussing this issue. The blame cannot be placed on any particular group of people. Not all people in the suburbs are evil gas-guzzling, water-hogging Republicans.
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"Sacrifice"
I think Perdue's use of the word "sacrifice" illustrates another major problem in the Global Warming discussion. Because he believes the drought is temporary, he is avoiding applying the knowledge we have about efficiency across the board and educating his citizens about right-sized water use.
Denver metro-area residents have been "sacrificing" by turning off the faucet when we brush our teeth and washing our cars in places that re-use water instead of in our driveways since the late 70's when we had our first major drought/suburban lifestyle intersection. The result of education and efficiency? A drastic drop in per-capita use in the metro area.
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Pot-Holy Public Relations
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin certainly talked a good game about fixing the sewers during her campaign -- after she spent decades profiting both as a "contractor" and high-ranking employee maintaining the status quo for mayors who literally stole and criminally mismanaged the system into dysfunction and insolvency. So now she takes credit for a necessary, urgent clean-up that had to be funded with additional taxes, instead of going after the crooks who took all that money and didn't maintain the sewers or the water department? Awfully nice work if you can get it, and even nicer if you get extra credit for being a reformer to boot.
Things other than my tax bill didn't change much after she took office, either: it still took six months and dozens of phone calls -- no exaggeration -- to fix broken mains in my downtown neighborhood, while Governor Perdue exacerbated problems by weirdly promoting fishing instead of conservation. This drought is a painful cosmic joke by somebody with a sharply bipartisan sense of humor.
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I'm not feeling much sympathy for Atlanta here
There is an agreement in place for management of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Rivers watershed and basin that took many years of painstaking debate and compromise to construct. For all that the state of Georgia was never happy with the agreement, it was as fair as it was going to get for everyone who was a stakeholder in the region.
And now, such a short time later, Georgia wants to throw that carefully-crafted agreement out of the window. First, bad planning on Georgia's part does not justify an emergency on the part of Alabama or Florida. And second, who's to say that Georgia might use the temporary emergency as an excuse to do away with the agreement for good, and not return to previous water discharge levels once the current drought has passed?
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The only bad thing...
about Atlanta's running out of water, in my view, is that it may encourage those anti-social greedy anti-environmental irresponsible and generally nasty Southerners to move out of the South. We don't need you! We don't want you! Stay in Dixie! If you have to go somewhere, go to Texas.
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re That's a lot of snow
Yes, and once this fact was revealed to the public in an AJC article, the outcry from all corners was such that they scrapped the plan within 12 hours. You'd like to cast the story as waste that nearly occurred -- the real story is that it didn't happen.