By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

Whenever water becomes scarce and there are outdoor watering bans (and threats of more severe restrictions on water use), such as now, I'm reminded of a feature columnist I used to work with, Lois Clendenen.

Lois had some interesting stories to tell, having been a WAC during World War II and stationed in postwar Germany.

She had seen some hard times in her life, and that gave her a perspective that we who have had it a little easier sometimes don't appreciate.

Lois didn't wait for a drought to come along to alert her to conserve water. When they've done without, conservation becomes a way of life for some people.

Waste was a sin in Lois's eyes. She didn't have a good place for a compost pile in her landscape, so she simply dug holes among her flowers and bushes and buried whatever leftovers didn't get eaten. It wasn't because she needed the fertilizer, but because she couldn't bear the thought of filling the landfill with perfectly useful compost.

She would occasionally write columns listing some of the ways to conserve water. For instance, instead of letting water run down the drain while waiting for the hot water to work its way from the water heater to the faucet, she would catch that warm-up water in a bucket or empty milk jug and use it to water the plants.

She also filtered and captured the gray water from her washing machine and used it for outdoor watering. There were dozens of other ideas that were habit with her.

I'm not as frugal as Lois. I let the water run down the drain while I wait for it to heat up. Having known Lois, I feel guilty about it, but I let it run.

But we all may have to take a lesson from Lois one of these days.

In the long run, a little three-year drought is no big deal. We've had `em before and we'll have `em again.

But it seems to my admittedly layman's mind that if we keep growing like we have been, somewhere along the road there's going to be a maximum amount of water that we can take from our rivers and lakes and aquifers.

And that maximum seems to be shrinking. The folks downstream are hollering for their share, and state and federal agencies seem inclined to increase the amount of water we have to release back into the rivers and streams so they can have a shot at it farther south.

We can build some more reservoirs and drill some more deep wells, but the supply is not unlimited.

More and more, water experts are getting together and forming semi-organized coalitions and think tanks, looking for ways to squeeze a few more drops out of the environment.

I hope they're also planning for the inevitable — trying to put their fingers on just how many people we can invite to the table.

I hope the long-term planners will use that information to come up with some build-out projections, and put some policies in place that will stop the flow of people before the people stop the flow of water. Otherwise, we'll be taking sponge baths instead of showers, maybe even saving our brown water in addition to our gray water.

And I hope they'll put some serious thought into how we fuel our economy once the building boom stops.

Here in Fayette County, we're having to abide by watering restrictions even though our leaders have done a good job of planning and we have plenty of water.

It would be nice if the rest of the region would learn from that and do a little better planning now, while there's still time.

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