SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY

Making the most of our water…Rural towns, family farms, researchers all are aware that every drop matters…Shaun McKinnon...The Arizona Republic …June 25, 2008 12:00 AM
How much water is enough? Metropolitan Phoenix can claim one of the most robust renewable water supplies in the West, a double-barreled network of reservoirs and canals fed by three river systems.Yet in the desert, water is never a certainty. Arizona's surface water in rivers and reservoirs, long considered a renewable resource, has been claimed to the lost drop, leaving it vulnerable to growth, drought and climate change. Rural communities are pumping groundwater past the point of recharge, digging a deficit for the next generation.Sustainability will require Arizonans to find that elusive, enduring balance between the need for water and the cost of overusing it. It will force people to ask tough questions about the link between water and the environment.And it will mean bringing together diverse interests to negotiate around a table that barely exists outside Phoenix and Tucson.

A perspective for your consideration . . . ?

I salute Shaun McKinnon in his 6-25-08 article … “making the most of our water” … and I rise to support his assessment that “sustainability” requires ALL citizens of Arizona to ask tough question about the link between water and the environment…?

One point seems to be overlooked that being to enable ALL the citizens of Arizona to ask the tough questions requires and demands clear transparency in ALL the information provided by government and business to these same citizens.

This transparency is sorely missing as the citizens of Arizona receive only redacted (edited or blacked out) accounts of the interface between government and multinational for-profit water purveyors granted exclusive rights to provide water to selected areas of our state.

Abraham Lincoln succinctly summed it up with these few words … I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.