The other late afternoon when the temperature was in
the upper ‘90’s, I went into the kitchen to start dinner, and turned on the
faucet. Nothing! Nada!
Zilch! No water! It turned out to be a simple fix, at least
for my husband. He had forgotten to turn
the hose off after filling the dog’s water bowls about an hour before I turned
on the faucet. It was an easy fix – the pump
had emptied the spring box, and as a result had lost its prime. He had it filling in no time, but we had to
wait to use water for a little while. That
was not a bad experience, but a very significant wake-up call, for sure. It had taken less than an hour to empty the
spring box which meant that not very much water was flowing in to the box.
For those who don’t know where we live, or why this
was such a big deal, we not only live in California, but when one looks at the
drought map of California, there is a sort of bump out on the coastal map about
half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
All of California is in a moderate drought, and so the whole state is
colored a dark pink on the drought map.
The severe drought areas are colored a light red, while this bump out
area is a really dark red, and where we are it is so red it is almost black. The colors are listed as moderate, severe,
and extreme. I maintain we are severely
extreme! Today about four or five cattle
trucks have gone down our road, filled we presume, with cattle headed for the
livestock market in a nearby town, since the springs are way down, and the
grass is very short, and already drying.
All of our springs and stock ponds are dry, or very pretty limited. We up here can make it through the drought
OK, but our worry is the people who live in town who are dependent on the
aquifers at the mouths of our canyons.
Many of us who live in these upper watersheds have
been warning the decision makers in our community that there will be a major
problem with water supply in a severe drought. We warned that the growth of the number of
households, or water using businesses, was rapidly approaching
non-sustainability Those whose livelyhoods depend on population growth, such as
real estate, construction, and development and tourism in general, have
maintained that we were all just ‘no growth’.
That we were ‘anti-business’.
This kind of language reminded me of what I had heard
in the 1950’s and after about the Soviet Union; that everyone there was
subservient to what the Communist State wanted; that their journalists could
not print anything that was antithetical to the State; and that all speech,
etc., must be positive toward the State or one ended up in prison, if
lucky. Supposedly the joke in the Soviet
Union was that if one read something in the state newspaper, Pravda, then one
simply assumed the opposite since no one believed anything they read in Pravda. Sort of like Faux News.
Now we have the opposite on the verge of becoming true
in this country. All of our decisions
must be based on what is good for business.
We can’t raise the minimum wage for poor people because it might harm
businesses; we can’t raise taxes on the wealthy to fund basic needs of the
people such as roads, bridges, schools, necessary services for people because
it will not help the wealthy or corporations.
Notice that those who are the most adamant climate change deniers have
strong ties to those corporations who are dependent on fossil fuels, natural
gas, or coal, with other people denying climate change for religious reasons. (Reputable
religions agree that the scientists are correct in their data based theories
proving climate change.) So, it is not profitable
for corporations to accept that the climate is changing, and we the people are
going to have to pay dearly for this intransigence.
And, in my opinion, as vital as business is to our
social structure for all of the reasons that anyone could give, it is not more
important than the entire people of the country. We all should not have to base every one of
our decisions based only on what is good for business. One rule of thumb I used, though not in every
decision I made, was the greatest good for the greatest number. If a developer, for example, wanted to build
a subdivision, and the resultant overuse of resources would cause stress for
the citizens already there. I voted no.
I could see no reason to burden the rest of the population with problems
that resulted from a development that would benefit only one person. (As a reminder, in California after Prop 13
many years ago, development does not pay for itself.)
It is not a good feeling when one turns on the faucet
and nothing comes out.
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