A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE OF 9-11

September 11,2006 - DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

In the ensuring five years since 9/11/2001 more than 50,000 - UNTESTED - septic tanks, grease traps and waste interceptors have been installed into Arizona’s ground thorough our state. While our attention has been diverted to a futile on-going illegal undeclared “war” in Iraq, Afghanistan and other portions of the Middle East, the water upon which Arizona desperately depends to sustain human life is allowed to be consistently degraded. These UNTESTED septic tanks, grease traps and waste interceptors are at the heart of the non-point source of pollution received by our underground aquifers.

In the ensuring five years since 9/11/2001, Arizona has enjoyed alarming rise in perchlorate residuals in water wells near the City of Phoenix sponsored “chip” plant on Tatum Road north of the CAP. Two young boys have perished as a result of the water delivered by the Rose Valley Water Company. Forest fires have devastated over a million acres in just one setting which was blanketed by fire retardant now a residual contaminating the ground and flowing into Roosevelt Lake, the major potable water storage reservoir on the Salt River system. Colorado River water flows near uranium mine tailings near Moab, Utah in its journey to becoming potable water for Phoenix and Tucson. Water in Lake Mead is contaminated from the liquid waste from military production facilities near Las Vegas. Conservatively more than 50 acres per day of virgin desert environment has been consumed to support our economic mantra of unrestricted growth. That’s 50 acres x 360 days x 5 years or more than = 90,000 acres in Maricopa County alone. Water supplies in Arizona continue to be negatively impacted by the lingering and protracted drought condition affecting most of the West. ADEQ relentlessly continues to permit sewage effluent water to enter Oak Creek, the Verde River and “blend” and become potable water in open defiance of its own regulations and rules, and served to the public in metropolitan Phoenix.

In the ensuring five years since 9/11/2001, the choices made by your Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ), which is solely responsible for our environment, which one would feel most assuredly includes water, leads one to conclude they have chosen to turn a blind eye on the ramifications our unrestricted growth has upon the quality of water and the quality of life of Arizona’s citizens. Though ADEQ is responsible, they do not make choices and decisions solely in the “dark” of night. WE, the people, through the silence of our majority, acquiesce to every decision ADEQ makes. WE, the people, placidly choose to go along to get along hoping that things will just work out without any effort in any form on our part.

On 11 Sept 2011, five years from today, care to speculate on the quantity and the quality of water we have in Arizona … ?