After close to a full year of drought conditions, the reservoir which supplies my city with water is back up to 100% capacity. Woooohooooo. We have gone from an exceptional drought to back to normal after a wet spring and I am thrilled. What I'm not thrilled by is some of the official statements I read in my local newspaper now that the postmortem on the drought is being written.
One of my favorite statements by the public utilities director was when he said: My main focus is going to say that the drought's what caused the water supply shortage . . . Well duh!
The City Manager said he has no regrets about waiting until the reservoir was nearly 9 feet below normal to ban lawn sprinklers. He said, We avoided the crisis. That is so ridiculous. They avoided the crisis because it started raining before we ran slam out of water. We never should have gotten that close to it happening.
I am glad that they are keeping some of the restrictions in place and are discussing plans for the future but it bothers me that none of the city officials will acknowledge that they let the situation get far too dire before acting. Oh well, hopefully in spite of all the irritating statements I'm reading in my paper, there will be some positive steps made to plan for future droughts.
8 comments:
your photos shows that we are not the only ones enjoying the end of the drought season. the animals and the plants as well.
nice post!
Official statements have a way to be irritating...
I am glad the situation is back to normal after the wet spring. We are catching up a little bit and the ban to water gardens has been released. I only hope people still keep a drought in mind, we have to change our habits and use our water wisely.
Lovely shots, Carver. Love the second one because of the beautiful "imperfection".
hi carver,
hope everything will be alright.
i have an AWARD for you!
Hi Don, That is so true about the animals and plants. I am particularly glad the drought ended before mosquito season. Not that I like mosquitoes, but I was concerned about the need to change out the bird's water daily once the mosquitoes start breeding. If I had left open containers of water for the birds that weren't regularly changed, I would have been inviting mosquitoes that I don't want.
Hi Mar, I am glad that you are starting to catch up some and I hope that will continue. I couldn't agree more about the need to continue to use water wisely. Sometimes I think it's up to the public to do the right thing in spite of officials who don't want to admit to mistakes.
I also liked the imperfections in my daisies. Almost like they are hugging, ha.
Thanks Mosey, I appreciate the award very much.
You know, Carver, that our government officials are a reflection of the people they govern . . . so a lot of times, people continue their merry way because they are not aware of the situation or that they lack access to the information. Instead, they get these edicts from on-high (like limiting water use) but without understanding why they are in place. I think it's a reflection of our society's culture, actually, that they let things get so dire before acting. We Americans have this tendency to think that there will be a technological fix and then we won't have to worry about what we're doing. It's a reflection of that attitude of NIMBY (not in my back yard). Well, to put it another way, we encourage excess because it fuels our economy and we are a capitalist society. The trick is to change our culture and society and become more proactive and forward-thinking rather than reactionary.
Criminy - what a soapbox, huh? Not sure where that came from . . . well, since I got my new all natural mattress yesterday, I've been thinking about all the chemicals we are exposed to on a daily basis, including foam that off-gasses carcinogenic gasses.
Your pictures are cool! And, I hope that your local government learns this lesson - not to relax water conservations so quickly just because the drought is over.
Hi Dee,
Great comment and I completely agree that the way we encourage excess because it fuels the economy is at the root of so many problems. There just has to be another way.
It is the funniest thing to me that officials so often make such innane statements. Do they think that nobody is listening or reading? Just open mouth, insert foot.
Words are so very powerful; they can instantly identify an idiot.
Love, K.
My definition of a redundancy is an air-bag in a politician's car.
-Larry Hagman
"Words are so very powerful; they can instantly identify an idiot." Well K you have outdone yourself with that one. Your own words are at least as good as any of the great quotes you are so good at finding.
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