Water Sage

Keeping Promises and Meeting Challenges

Let's work to ensure that those who come after us won’t have to make ruthless ‘either/or’ decisions about who --or what-- has the right to water in the future.

What is omitted in current discussions is any sense of the urgency about our water resource itself. 

Think about the person who responds to the tap on the shoulder while the pickpocket is lifting his wallet.  Many water discussions come close to being distractions when compared to the overall health of our ecosystem and our water.  The current drought highlights its tenuous existence.  For decades, we have consumed more water than is renewably supplied, making up the deficit with groundwater.  As an invisible deficit, consequences of living beyond our means may not show up by any specific date -- providing a useful excuse to office holders.

If we don't acknowledge the benefits that water has limits, then we won't be ready and willing to take steps to preserve it.  We'll continue to transfer water from agriculture to urban uses without considering the overall effect such transfers have.  We'll continue to act as if there will be new fonts of water to bail us out.  In addition, we can’t forget that drought and climate variations are expected to further limit an already stretched water supply.

Changes to the oversight and administration of water resources are past due.  Unless there are concentrated efforts to defend water, a day may come when there are no verdant ditches for walking, jogging or horseback riding; no valuable bonus of recharge from irrigation to help balance the regional water budget; and no longer the means to produce food locally. 

To counter such a scenario, and to help direct policy toward the brightest possible future, I suggest that we improve current methods of regional water accounting and resolve the issue of water right ownership.

Please help to stop the pickpocket rather than falling victim to ancillary taps on the shoulder. 

(June 2011)