Turkey and Syria get first dibs on the Euphrates

The New York Times recently published an article and an accompanying slideshow on the two-year drought–and unconscionable water-hogging by neighboring Turkey and Syria–that is decimating the country and drying up the  main artery of its life blood, the Euphrates River*. The article notes also that the current crisis is partially due to Iraq’s misuse of water over recent decades.

By the way, I found the link to the Times’s story at what looks to me to be a very valuable news aggregator, GlobalPost. It features quick hits on and links to stories about planet-wide goings-on. Actually there’s something posted about the Moon today, so we may be talking solar system-wide coverage. My quick description does not do justice to its robust content. Check it out.

This from the Times’ slideshow:

Strangled by the water policies of its neighbors, Turkey and Syria, a two-year drought and years of misuse by Iraq and its farmers, the Euphrates River is significantly smaller than it was just a few years ago, and some officials worry that it could soon be half of what it is now.

* Caveat: I often link to Wikipedia to offer background information. I don’t think that the site generally is even close to infallible, but I think we’re safe when it comes to geography, and to some extent, history.

Herein, sorely vexed by the fact that an entire hour has been stolen from our lives by a magical process called daylight saving, we sullenly and lazily provide links to a lot of bad news about water, complete with peevish commentary.

Water makes US troop in Iraq sick.
Thanks to Dick Cheney (Where is he now, anyway? We should never let him out of our sight.), G.I.’s in Iraq are exposed to water so contaminated that it makes them sick after using it for personal hygiene or laundry.

California farmers planning to sell “their” water.
From the economics blog, The Bayesian Heresy:

With water becoming increasingly precious in California, a rising number of farmers figure they can make more money by selling their water than by actually growing something.

Yes, we know, WTF?? Rather than toiling in their fields, many California farmers will soon be spending their days sipping avocado gimlets on their spacious redwood patios overlooking their fallow acres, iPhones to their ears, entertaining competing bids for their subsidized water from drought-panicked Southern California municipalities.

The water is subsidized so the indolent hayseeds can raise crops at competitive prices, not so they can become languorous water magnates. It’s not “their” goddamn water to do with as they please. If it’s more money they want, why can’t they grow marijuana or opium poppies like other struggling farmers around the world?

California avocado growers forced to restrict crops.
An avocado shortage could cause riots in California. The money graf (at least in respect to why Southern California should quickly be put under martial law):

The tree cutting comes as residents in Los Angeles, San Diego and most other area cities are still getting 100 percent of the water they need, with most of it going for lawns and landscaping.

“People need to know that in Southern California, water is a precious resource. But they’d rather water their lawns and cut off the farmers,” said Laura Blank, executive director of the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau.

Tri-state water war heats up!
Because states are run by developers and their elected minions, water disputes are not settled in a rational manner beneficial to the states’ residents. They are instead fought out in court in an endless series of expensive lawsuits and counter-suits on the taxpayer’s dime solely to determine which group of snorting water hogs will have first dibs at the trough. If you think any of this water war business has anything to do with anything but screwing the many for the benefit of a very few, well, we over here at Waterblogged.info—where today’s motto is A tool and his pool are soon parted—just don’t know what to tell you.

Kansas City resident finds water on the bottom of her dishwasher between washings!
Plumbing advice columnist Andy, of Andy’s Pipe Dream in nearby Lenexa, urges bringing in a professional to handle the problem! Waterblogged.info smells a conflict of interest coming up from that drain.

“Too little, too late,” snarls Governor Sonny Perdue. “We want the Tennessee River’s water, and by golly gumdrops, we’re gonna have it!”

Actually, Perdue didn’t say that, but he could have, because, like the members of the Georgia legislature, he’s a shameless idiot who should be removed from office. The state’s newest solution to persistent drought and the imminent drying up of Atlanta? Why, revive a centuries’ old border dispute between the Water Hog State and Tennessee, and move Geogia’s border approximately 1-1/2 miles to the north to include a portion of the Tennessee River. This would give Georgia’s real-estate developers—the state’s true rulers—access to that flow’s prodigious waters, and would make thousands of Tennesseans instant pissed-off citizens of Georgia in the process. (This just in: Perdue has indicated that Georgia would declare Tennesseans caught up in the land grab illegal aliens and deport them.)

No really, all of that is true. Well, we made up the Perdue quote and the illegal alien stuff, but there are things that you can’t make up, no matter how much Jack Daniels you drink.

Tennesseans have responded predictably, as the linked article states, “with humor, anger and defiance.” (And, as in any beautiful spring dispute, a Southern man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of gun play: “Us good Tennesseeans (sic) will take our long rifles up to Lookout Mountain and fire when ready,” said Justin Wilson, a Nashville attorney and former deputy governor.)

Mayor Ron Littlefield of Chattanooga, now arguably America’s funniest mayor, took the humor high road and made a creative gesture of peace, conciliation, and wicked shame to Georgia by proclaiming February 27 “Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day” and delivering a truckload of bottled water to the legislators—driven mad, proclaimed Littlefield, by thirst. The proclamation follows in its entertaining entirety.

PROCLAMATION
WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and

WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and

WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and

WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and

WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and

WHEREAS, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,

NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that

I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as

“Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day”

Full disclosure: The unnecessarily belligerent title is a word-for-word quotation of a search string* that brought someone to Waterblogged.info. We couldn’t resist using it as a punchy introduction, although Canada isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when we consider the term water hog. That distinction goes to the Dishonorable Chris G. Carlos, who until very recently was using up to 400,000 gallons of water a month– most of it to water his verdant three-acre estate–in drought-stricken Atlanta, Georgia.

We have to accept–because Carlos said so through a public relations flack–that he wasn’t aware that there was a drought, and he promised to use less water going forward. Perhaps he was too busy inundating his property to notice that every lawn in Atlanta was brown except his.

We don’t want to offend our neighbors to the north, and note that even some Canadians call Canadians water hogs. And that’s OK, because it’s Canadian on Canadian. Take this blogger, for example. After stating that Canadians are indeed porcine in their hydrological consumption patterns, he notes that:

Apparently people in other parts of the country feel the same. In the world, Canada ranks second in water consumption, [Waterblogged.info ed note: Guess which country ranks first. Hint: Chris G. Carlos lives there.] which is fine while we have it. . .there could be a time when we need to use or help others with our vast reserves.

As this cautionary article in a Canadian paper makes clear, not all is wet and wonderful in Canada. Sure, there’s a lot of water, but most of it is in the wrong place and flowing the wrong way, and there’s a host of other serious threats and problems. From the article:

And 60 per cent of Canada’s fresh water drains northward, away from where it is needed most – along the band hugging the U.S. border where the vast majority of Canadians live.

And:

In Quebec, blue-green algae plagues lakes. St. Lawrence water levels were so low this fall that water had to be pumped in from Lake Ontario. Montreal’s crumbling pipes leak 40 per cent of their valuable cargo en route to taps. Water that reaches some Montreal homes has lead levels deemed potentially hazard to children under six.

Upstream, the Great Lakes Basin, the planet’s largest continuous body of fresh water, is surrounded by a huge population: 40 million people – one in three Canadians, one in 10 Americans. The lakes face growing demand from industry, power plants, farms and urban sprawl. Water levels are at historic lows in some Great Lakes.

*Another search string that brought some lucky googler to Waterblogged.info was Chris G. Carlos water using asshole.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::