Sometimes it'd be better to be an editorial cartoonist than an editorial writer.
Instead of arguing a point of view about the City of Prince George's watering ban, a cartoon would make the point just as effectively. First, some background. Charlton Heston, the late actor, was an infamous head of the National Rifle Association, an American advocacy group that defends the right to bear arms. He was notorious for a speech where he hefted a rifle in the air and growled that the government would take away his guns "from my cold, dead hands."
The cartoon would feature a caricature of Heston, holding a water hose and spray gun over his head and shouting "from my cold, wet hands."
Silly, yes, but no worse than the outpouring (pun intended) of angst over the gall of the city to ban the use of water sprinklers and unattended hoses. DON'T THEY KNOW IT'S HOT OUTSIDE? MY LAWN WILL DIE!!!!!!!! (lots of capital letters and exclamation points show the writer is truly upset, really means business and has Twister Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It playing at 11 in the background).
The tattling and finger-pointing started almost immediately.
THE CITY IS WATERING BEHIND CITIZEN FIELD!!!!!!!!
MY STUPID NEIGHBOUR IS WATERING!!!!!!!
THE GOLF COURSE IS WATERING!!!!!!!!
Now some cold water on all that outrage (and all those exclamation points).
Watering is still allowed by handheld methods, including spray guns and watering cans.
Exemptions are available by contacting City Hall for homeowners or businesses who just planted lawns or laid down sod.
The Prince George Golf and Curling Club is on its own well, not city water.
City bylaw officers were out Tuesday evening. They didn't hand out out tickets ($50 per day) to anyone violating the watering ban but they did dish out about 250 warnings.
The problem isn't lack of water but the inability of pumps to keep up with the demand. On Monday night, city residents used 4.5 million litres of water per hour or almost two full Olympic-sized swimming pools. The average nightly use is about one million litres an hour.
Water rationing is a reality in most of the world, due to either lack of supply and/or lack of infrastructure to transport the water from source to user. Rural and isolated communities rely on water truck delivery to tanks in homes and businesses, as do northern hamlets that can't have underground water pipes from wells because of the permafrost. Everyone else, meaning the vast majority of Canadians, enjoys the precious privilege of turning on the tap and expecting water on demand and as much as they want.
That is changing fast. Reservoirs are starting to run dry at the end of summer in towns and cities across Canada for a variety of reasons, from rapid population growth to years of drought, in summer rainfall and winter melt.
In the United States, particularly in California, West Texas and the ridiculously hot and dry southwestern states of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, drought and water restrictions have been a problem for decades, recently exacerbated by huge population growth. One of the classic 1970s Hollywood movies was Chinatown, featuring a hard-on-his-luck private detective, played by Jack Nicholson, who takes on an infidelity case and stumbles into a conspiracy to divert a massive amount of the region's water supply.
Stealing water is an old tradition in the American West and it lives on today. The Calleguas Municipal Water District in Ventura Country, near Los Angeles, is suing TV star Tom Selleck for stealing more than a dozen truckloads of water from a public hydrant and hauling it to his nearby 60-acre ranch, where he grows avocados.
The Associated Press story reported that area communities have cut water use by 25 per cent in the past two years due to drought and have ordered mandatory cutbacks in Ventura County as high as 36 per cent.
While Selleck hasn't had his day in court, the story does illustrate how entitled some people feel to free water and how far they're willing to go to get it.
The problem is that fresh, clean water isn't an unlimited resource and its delivery and consumption certainly isn't free, either. Even in Prince George, where residents are blessed with easy access to plenty of water, this important resource should be used carefully and conservatively.
