Dear
Readers: The column I had planned for this week, about the downstream end of
our local hydro-cycle, has been overcome by events. First, it seems that enough
writers have gotten a whiff of the wastewater treatment measure destined for the
November *2008* election, and have chosen to give it a good wiping here on the
pages of the Argus. With that ballot stinker so far into the future, and the
public attention span being what it is (not you, Dear Readers; those *other*
people to whom you give copies of my column), I decided to keep my paper dry
for another year.
The real
news this week is upstream. The Petaluma City Council is considering a measure that
would require homeowners to fix their leaky pipes before they can sell their
homes. The real estate industry is upset, perceiving this as another spool of
red tape to wrap around the legs of the drowning home sale market. Why are we
bothering with such legislation? What’s the benefit?
According
to the newspaper story, the new measure would save 64 million gallons of water
by 2025. Wow, fantastic! With that, we can help bring the
Sorry, Mr.
Fuzzy Head! This conservation measure, and possibly other water conservation
investments and sacrifices we’re being asked (or required) to make, is so we
can invite another x-teen thousand people to join the P-Town party over the
next eighteen years. Well then, City Hall, do you mind if I see the invitation
list? Oh look, hundreds more McMansions along the
urban separator and on hillsides, blotting out a ridgeline here, choking an
exquisite streamside woodland there, sending SUVs downtown to choke our streets
everywhere.
Many, many
questions… Are these “benefits” worth the costs? Who benefits? Do those who
have conserved have to cut back as much as those who haven’t? Who *owns* the
water that would be conserved to allow for more development? What obligations
do the owners have to share it, or not share it? And thus, who should pay for
conservation, those who *were* using the water, or those who *will be* using
it? In other words, will the taxpayers, or the property owners, or property buyers,
or the developers pay? Is it simply a political decision, depending entirely on
the City Council and how they are influenced?
As
difficult as these questions are, there are other questions which, perhaps
because they challenge our most basic assumptions, never get asked. Questions
like: what happens if this conservation-created surplus is only a paper
surplus? What if climate change strips it away, dropping those 64 million
gallons into some distant watershed? And even if we can capture and keep all
that water, what happens in eighteen years? What choices will those people
have? Do we care?
We owe our
existence through the millennia to the genetic coding that drives parents to
make sacrifices to ensure the survival of their young. We love our kids, but we
don’t seem to understand that settling for a strategy that works for maybe one or
two 20-year General Plan cycles is, in the end, a sophisticated form of child abandonment.
The alternative?
We can live
rich and rewarding lives on a small fraction of what we now consume, whether
it’s water, energy, land or any other material. That’s the only viable future.
The question we must answer is: how do we turn the corner without crashing?