George,

Why are we here? 4 years of drought, population growth, and wasteful water usage.

How bad is it? I don't want to be an alarmist but I think it is only responsible to consider the worst case scenario so we can be prepared if we have to deal with it. Unless we get a couple of good hurricanes our Christmas present will be no water. This will mean you can't flush toilets. You won't be able to fight fires. The University uses 4,850,000 gallons of water a month so it might get closed down. Then I and several thousand other people wold be out of work. Many of the students would go home. This would have a ripple effect on the rest of the local economy. Scarey isn't it.

In the short run I think we have to go to the most extreme measures possible to save every drop we can. If they turn out to be unnecessary the damage is minimal. But if we don't adopt them and we do run out of water we are in deep trouble. If nothing else extending our water supply by adopting more stringent methods will at least buy us more time so we have a better chance of getting some rain or snow. I just don't think most people realize our precarious our situation is.

I am afraid our leadership doesn't have the courage to adopt the meaures necessary because they are afraid of the public reaction. They are hoping a big tropical storm will bail us out. As friend said to me this morning, depending on a tropical storm to solve our water crisis is like having a business plan that counts on winning the lottery. What if we get a 5th year of drought. As Rick Daniels of WWWV would say on his Friday rant "It is all over, we are finished, etc. etc....."

After we get through this we have to address the long term problems. Do we limit (can we limit) population growth? Can (should) we build a system that would allow us to recycle our waste water? I saw something on PBS where there is a country that only gets 4 inches of rain in a normal year. You bet they are good at water management and we could adopt some of their methods. The worst thing that could happen is to go through this crisis and learn nothing from it. Back in the 70s we had 2 gas crisises. People were buying diesel VWs because they got 45 mpg. Now everybody drives an SUV and they want to dig up the Artic Reserve. Maybe there may be more true to Rick's rant than we want to acknowledge.

Have a good weekend,

Downing Smith (electronic mail, September 20, 2002)