TREAT WATER WISELY

TUESDAY – 14 NOV 06

You say you understand water. .? Tell me then why we Americans consistently choose to see water as merely a chemical composition – H20 – lacking any positive attributes. Tell me why we Americans, especially those of us choosing to live in the arid American West, look upon water as something which will always be there and abundantly. Tell me why we Americans can consistently choose to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to any information casting questions about the “safety” and quality of our drinking water. Tell me why we Americans choose to support any business which knowingly continues to contribute to degrading and polluting any form of our water. Explain to me why we willingly support development of homes along the banks of rivers and streams into which we will deliver septic and sewage effluent. Explain to me why we do not rise in mass to demand immediate cessation to all forms of pollution of any form of our water.

$$ - Open Range – Wal-Mart . . . The once legendary open vistas of the American West are fast becoming home to “super-sized” Wal-Mart’s and ground ripe for the play money of developers to strip for golf courses, homes and irrigated water features including sport boating. While our sitting Governor and Legislature and ADWR in fashionable public manner champion positions noting that communities such as Cottonwood shall have in place “drought” water provisions by 2008, they allow older established water features in the fashionable communities in Mesa, Tempe, Chandler to continue to use our precious groundwater for their private water features for a select few to enjoy and benefit. Those folks living in the barrio in Phoenix or those in South Phoenix, Avondale, Surprise or Gila Bend are precluded from utilizing these private water features which are fed with water belonging to “we” the people.

$$ - The law – Water Rights . . . Arizona’s water law is based on the doctrine of prior appropriation, but it is administered based on a bifurcated system where surface water is regulated separately from ground water. For the layman this means I got my dubs on this water first, so go find your own … don’t even think about asking me to share it. And moreover, I can damn well use my water in any manner I see fit. If in the process of irrigating my farm and crops I choose to introduce legally toxic chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers into this water and as it seeps into the ground or exits my farm as “tail-water” and back into “live” water or the subsurface aquifer from which you may utilize to drink, so be it. That’s your problem.

Your community needed jobs so my firm came here and at great expense opened a state of the art microchip manufacturing facility. That we were granted extraordinary tax and infrastructure benefits from your cities, you should expect, it’s all part of the game. While we did not anticipate polluting the underground aquifer, and certainly not to the extent it is, that’s just an “unintended” consequence of being in business and one for which you certainly can not hold us solely responsible and accountable.

Climate – Copper - $$ . . . The heart of the American West – Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah are not blessed with a “super” abundant amount of rainfall. Moreover moisture is not equally distributed resulting in many miles of very arid desert environments with limited water. Within this region lies the heart of the American mining industry. The limited rivers are teeming with hydroelectric dams carrying the bulk of the electricity produced to populous far removed from the producing region. What rivers are not dammed to produce energy are dammed to contain water for the mines and farming. With the advent of burgeoning populations in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Denver and Phoenix the water of the once mighty Colorado River is bled dry before it reaches the ocean in Baja.

Disease – Famine – Pestilence . . . The cavalier attitude we Americans have chosen respecting our interaction with water is about to deliver to us a re-visiting of wide spread disease – famine – pestilence in forms thought unimaginable. Am I trying to scare you – NO – shake you to get your attention – YES – to suggest you have a personal responsibility to become – AWARE – most assuredly. But in the final analysis it is solely a matter of choice which each of us is obligated to make solely for himself/herself.

Water gives life ……………. Water is living

Treat it wisely.