Even though it's a basic necessity of life we tend to take water for granted in this county. A few of us are still around that can remember fresh water wells and streams that provided our drinking water for us. Mining; Strip Mining and heavy blasting has destroyed a lot of community wells and now we all have the need for what we call city water. The county spends millions putting water lines in Pike County communities and will spend millions more trying to get it to the rest that need water and maintaining them. The Pike County Health Departments Environmental Department works hard at getting approved septic systems in and hunting down straight pipes that run into about all the creeks around here. Creeks that run into the rivers that furnish our water supply, we now pay a monthly water bill and have to put up with loss of service at times and boil water advisories. The chlorine taste is hard to drink for some but the days we can't taste it we wonder about the fecal matter bacteria content so we buy our drinking water separate. Use the city water just to wash clothes, flush and shower with and worry about doing the dishes with it. Large grocery bill and the added expense of several cases of bottled water, again a lot of us never thought we would be paying for something that was plentiful and free. I think its time we started thinking about this valley fill and covering up fresh water streams here in Pike County. If you drink water or your family drinks water you need to think about it.
       We give up a lot just so eastern coal corporations can stay competitive with western coal. Wyoming coal is just below the surface on flat land and is 10 times lower in sulfur. I don't believe you even have to wash it. They went from drift shaft mining mostly in Appalachia to Mountain Top Removal and Valley Filling just to cut cost. What I call scrooge stripping or miser mining. You save a lot of money in stripping if you don't have to put the overburden back on the original contour. Just push it over into a pristine valley and cover a fresh water stream. I do not give a damn about a coal corporations bottom line. Over 100 years of the coal corporations exploiting this region sickens me. They stole the mineral, John Mayo's broad form deed stole the land. Would never let us diversify so they could keep a half starved work force to mine coal for them. Now that it only takes a handful to mine with MTR they are intent on destroying our environment and leaving us this ecological disaster to live in. We don't get enough money generated back into the community to justify this type of mining.
     They sometimes make the argument the flat land helps us. It takes millions to develop an industrial site you need more than just a piece of hard packed flat land with a weed mix sprayed on it. It takes millions for a housing development, put industrial sites and housing developments on the flat land you have already created for us before you make us any more.
     They put a few Elk on a piece of so-called reclaimed land. If you put elk on every piece of reclaimed flat land you leave us we will have a herd bigger than the Rocky Mountain States. That one elk replaces a myriad of native species that can never come back to a MTR and a Valley fill because they need a deciduous forest, "trees" to survive. I am not going into all the different types of animals that can't come back but should to show that stupid Walker/Cat commercial is just made for a people they see as morons. To think a people would cover up, destroy mountains and cover up valley that includes a fresh water stream because a cartoon bug told them to. A cartoon bug may be able to come back to valley fill but make a mental list in your mind of how many native species we have down here that depend on tress's that can't come back. We need to leave a better legacy to our children and grandchildren than a mountain top removal and a valley filled eco disaster. We need to leave a few fresh water streams.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

With such momentum going against the Earth, U-turns can seem impossible.

"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival."
--Wendell Berry

Thanks, Ashley, for the poignant quote from Wendell Berry.

As for all you guys who actually live in "The West," and who actually do things like take showers and flush toilets, especially those down by LA and San Diego and Phoenix: How the hell do you look at yourselves in the mirror, and say you know what is good for this planet?  Why do you not pick up at once and move to a well-watered region?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Of course, the main issue here is that when we pay our water bills, we really aren't paying the true cost of what it took to get to our taps. The same goes for agriculture, industry, etc. But changing the entire system to get people to pay the actual cost of water is not as easy as flipping a switch. This is a very complex issue with major ramifications for the poor who if they were forced to pay the true cost of water, would have a hard time living comfortably.

And there is no doubt that the true cost of water in the southwest is much higher than in other well-watered parts of the country. So the real question is, how do we get dry regions to pay more money than wet regions because as far as I understand, they pay pretty much the same amount right now and the difference is made through government subsidies.

So yes, we need to somehow provide disincentives to people who want to move to places where the true cost of water is very high. We need innovative solutions quick because right now, the fastest growing parts of the country are exactly the places where the water is most scarce.

But at the same time, we should not be chastising people for where they live (but feel free to chastise them for not conserving water) because it will get us nowhere. The only way that people will stop living in those dry regions is if it costs more to do so.

But let me play with your head for a minute ... what if climate change was so crazy that monsoon rains all ended up in the Southwest and the rest of the country was dry as toast? Not modeled or a likely outcome but who knows? What a disaster!

It's about as crazy as Phoenix even having a drop of tapwater these days, I admit.

Onward through the fog

As always, things are just ducky for most people in most places.

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Part of the problem here in Arizona is the easterners and Californians who move in and have to have their lawns and their golf courses. Phoenix is particularly bad for that... We need water to live. We do NOT need landscaping (the desert provides wonderful trees, plants, flowers...and they even grow in yards). And what's wrong with desert golf courses? At least, in Tucson some (but not all) use "gray water".

We've got to get our heads out of the sand and start conserving, while there's still some water to conserve.

    Hanging in space like a perfect jewel a beautiful blue green orb the envy of the universe.  Third planet from the sun, a little closer in, a little farther out and the miracle of life that gives this planet its singular uniqueness would not be a part of the universal consciousness. Mars hangs in the distance a reminder to humanity of its precarious place in the universe and its tenuous hold on life. And man now pines over a refuge on such an uninhabitable place because its getting hard to breath here, it never occurs to him to rejuvenate this garden paradise or to even stop the destruction of the earth. From since the time he discovered fire he has used it to destroy the planet, adept in using either chemical combustion or nuclear fire, adept and eager to either burn or poison whatever he turns his mind to. From scratching in the ground with a stick to using gigantic earth machines to scar the earth he has left a festering open wound on much of the land, destroying natural habitat and ruining the very essence of life, fresh water.
    The best political system he could come up with is one of which the few exploit the many and like parasites feed off the masses. The best organizational system he can adhere to is one of class either among nations or mankind. The needs of the few are provided on the backs of the many and not only needs but also vulgar opulence that decry's the material waste and pollution it breeds. In the land of hot sand and scorpions poison is pumped from beneath the ground to feed the insatiable desires of capitalism and a radical religious fervor is burning like a torch ready to ignite it. Like a moth to a flame they run to it, mesmerized by it, addicted to it, they lie, cheat and kill for it. The nations of the world go whoring after it. They try feverishly to substitute it with more dead matter from the ground that poisons the air and wraps the planet in a death shroud, as alchemy of old they try to turn coal into black gold. Coal smoke stack's pump death clouds into the air signaling to each other the end is near. The smoke forms the shape of all the demons in hell and the sulfur adds a sense of realism that Dante could not pen with words.
    As the last of the species dies without the ritual of chemical embalming those at least can now say they are in harmony with the earth. Something good may come of them yet. As the last hyenas in Africa tells the last human whom the joke was on and what they were laughing about the scorpions of the desert shake hands over the graves of the Sheiks of the land. The cockroaches will come forth out of the darkness and claim their inheritance. They will rejoice on the corpses of the last humans and tell stories about all the species they have witnessed before, laughing about the last and most stupid of the lot.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.