[meteorite-list] OT: Wild Fire in Tucson

From: Paul Heinrich <lenticulina1_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:42 2004
Message-ID: <20030622040636.31571.qmail_at_web21402.mail.yahoo.com>

Impactika wrote:

>And I read in the paper just a few days ago
>that Los Angeles has already used up its
>allotment of Colorado River water FOR THE YEAR!!!!!
>
>People see all that wide open space we have out
>here in the West, they don't notice it is a
>desert, an irrigated desert in many places,
>but still a desert.

....text deleted....

My favorite quote in the environmental geology
category came from whoever was mayor of Phenoix
when funding for the Central Arizona Project
was being attacked in Congress. During a press
conference, he emotionally stated that without
the water from CAP, the Pheonoix area would
become a desert. He seemed totally oblivious to
the fact that the Phenoix area was already and
had been for a long time desert. It was so unreal
that I wished I had taped as an educational aid
for environmental geology classes to illustrate
that good science alone is insufficient in
solving such problems.

Recently, a good geologist friend had a project
to compile data about how much groundwater was
actually being extracted by different types of
farming, ranching, and urban uses. The first
problem that he encountered is that nobody would
tell him how much groundwater they were using.
Even governmental agencies, whose records are
normally public record did everything they could
to hide and make confidental records concerning
their use of griundwater. When ranchers and
farmer organizations found out he was trying a
way to estimate groundwater production by studying
publically availavable records of electrical usage
by individual cells in the distribution grid, they
sued in court to enjoin him from making such
estimates and have the records sealed against any
public access. As a result, it was impossible for
him get the data needed for any understanding of
groundwater usage. The USGS groundwater people
have the same problems. There is an rather
intense, each person for hisself or herself and
everyone else be damned attitude, where resources,
such as groundwater, is treated like digging for
gold in the California gold rush. It is like each
person got theirs and everybody else can shrivel
up and die from lack of water for all they care
Unfortuantely, I lack any solution for this
part of the problem.

I think I will stay in Louisiana even though we
are having our own drought. Louisiana might
have the reputation as being a "banana republic"
run by a bunch of yahoos. However, at least the
state has taken the first steps towards protecting
our aquifers, which are having problems, from
being ruined. At least the legislators are
heeding the warnings that geologists and other
people have been giving them.

Yours,

Paul
Baton Rouge, LA


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Received on Sun 22 Jun 2003 12:06:36 AM PDT