Wednesday, June 6, 2001
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Wednesday, June 6, 2001 |
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Politics and rain on a Friday morning By DAVE HAMRICK What a joyous thing rain is! Especially summer rain ... especially during a protracted period of drought ... especially if you can sleep in. It's Friday morning, and I woke to the sound of a hard, persistent downpour, echoing through the rafters. Nothing would have been more pleasant than to have pulled the covers up and used the narcotic of that heaven-sent symphony outside to lull(aby) me into and out of half-sleep for an hour or two ... but the show must go on. Besides, Sallie Satterthwaite is much better at painting this sort of picture than I am. So let's talk about rain and politics. Rain fills the lakes back up so you don't have water shortages and you don't have to deal with your government telling you that you can't wash the car Sunday ... you have to wash it Saturday because your address ends in a seven. Sorry you were too busy Saturday. Now you'll have to wait until Monday, which is a work day, so for all practical purposes the car will have to stay dirty until next Sunday. All of that, of course, is dross compared to the inconveniences some people in this country encounter during droughts ... not being able to take baths, having to buy bottled water for drinking. Then again, in some countries they just have to die, which, I suppose, is the ultimate inconvenience. Stay with me; I'll get to a point eventually. On another recent rainy day as I drove to work in a downpour the news on the radio was about how the statewide water restrictions will probably remain in effect for many months to come, and boaters had better be careful because the water in Lake Lanier is lower than it was last year. Lower than last year? After all the rain we've had this spring? I'm no expert, but that sounds more like a management problem than a drought problem. In contrast, Fayette County's lakes are slap full, and the state's one-size-fits-all water restrictions are as much of an inconvenience to the local water system as they are to the general public. Odd-even is always a good idea, because the population is growing, and there is a finite limit on the amount of water available long-term. Odd-even rules help spread the demand out a little bit ... reduce the peaks and valleys. It's the state's insistence on a total ban from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. that's problematic here. The one restriction reduces peaks and valleys, but the other causes them. Everybody with an odd address is out there at 8 in the morning running those sprinklers. Then they run them again from 10 to midnight (and who's going to know if they cheat a little, or a lot, past midnight?) And then the water system people have to get the tanks full again for the even addresses to water in the morning. I'm sure at this point you're expecting me launch into a diatribe about the liberal solution always being big government, and local government being much better equipped to solve local problems. That is, after all, my natural inclination. But in this case I'm afraid I have to waffle a bit. Water, after all, is a resource that does not fit within local political borders, or even regional ones. What we do to the Chattahoochee here in north Georgia is giving the folks who try to manage West Point Lake, over on the Alabama border, absolute fits. Even if we get all our water from deep underground, we can't escape responsibility for the effects downhill from here. Floridians have to deal not only with less water in their aquifers, but also with the giant house-eating sink holes that can result. Gov. Roy has a penchant for superagencies, and as a conservative and a believer in local control, that makes me nervous. At the same time, there are areas like transportation and management of natural resources where we have to broaden our thinking and build a wider consensus. It remains to be seen whether these superagencies are instruments to help us come up with better ideas that will protect our way of life for the future or instruments to create a better controlled fiefdom for the leaders of our state.
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