This is serious, folks.
We’re running out of water.
This should not come as any great surprise to us, but based on our actions, sometimes we wonder.
As the lake levels drop at alarming rates seemingly overnight, without hot-summer evaporation to blame, we only need to look inward. While many suggestions for water conservation had been, up until midnight, just that, suggestions, we have now entered into a stage of desperate seriousness.
Today Wichita Falls implements Stage 3 water use restrictions. It is a call for all residents and all water customers to reduce water consumption by 35 percent. Stage 3 calls for an extra effort by all of us to reduce the amount of water we use, but the restrictions are not intolerable. For most residents, it’s a matter of complying with outdoor watering restrictions. A lush yard is a small sacrifice to make in order to have water to drink, bathe and flush. Failure to achieve the water saving means we may go into the more draconian restrictions of Stage 4 by summer.
North Texas is in the third year of drought. The National Weather Service predicts the drought will continue through spring and into summer. Cyclical droughts, such as the one we appear to have entered, can last seven years or longer. We do not have enough water to last another four years.
By nature, most of us do not like to be tattletales or snitches, but people who violate water restrictions are stealing from their neighbors. No one should hesitate to turn in the cheaters by calling Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 761-7477 or at 720-5000 after hours.
It’s that serious.
To illustrate just how serious the water crisis has become, Wichita Falls is poised to embark on an unprecedented project to pipe effluent water from the Red River Wastewater Plant on the northeast side of town to the Cypress Street Treatment Plant on the southwest part of town. This is a herculean effort that will cost taxpayers millions of dollars, but it may become necessary to ensure the city’s survival.
How do you sell a university to prospective students in a town with no water? How do you encourage industry to relocate where the quality of living is impeded by lack of water?
The time to act has passed. We should have been, by edict or self-policing, monitoring our water usage for years. We cannot rely only on our city officials to tell us the obvious.
We need to plead with our elected officials in Texas to demand part of the rainy day funds for our own infrastructure, if and when it is available. We need to plead the loudest, as other cities will demand the same.
We need to encourage innovation. The next great idea will be how to bring water to a dry land.
We need to pray for rain. Seriously, call on God to bring us nourishment. And when it comes, as it will, treat the rain as a gift from heaven and not as carte blanche to continue excesses. We are in a drought-susceptible part of the world, and we need to behave, despite how glorious a sudden rain may seem, as if we still are.
We need to save ourselves.
We need to save water.
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Comments » 13
BaylorBear writes:
TRN:
This very day Mr. Chase is quoted in the Wichita Kansas paper as saying "The loans (for Natura) are secured by the equipment and some of the leftover mattresses, but that’s NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE LOAN VALUE," Chase said.
This is a direct acknowledgment that 1) we are not getting our $8 million back, 2) the 1.5 to 1 collateral argument was misleading and 3) the citizens have been strung along all this time.
strlcuckoo22 writes:
And we are interfering in favor of which side?? If memory serves as soon as our arms go to a conflict our troops follow.
Wichita_Willie writes:
So why are we GIVING away 20 fighter jets and 200 tanks to Egypt?
PoorRichard writes:
"...Our Opinion: Egypt's great risk of collapse..."
SO WHAT???!!??? I, for one, COULD CARE LESS!
Let it collapse and be a shining example of what happens when extreme, radical "religion-based" groups like the Muslim Brotherhood start trying to run a country in today's world.
PoorRichard writes:
"WE" aren't.
Our insane, inept, out-of-their-league current leadership, however, is.
wofum1947 writes:
Something tells me the preceding five comments belong to or with the editorial from yesterday.
wofum1947 writes:
Becoming an attorney, doctor or anyone of many other "professionals" is a very worthy ideal to be pursued. However, I think for too long in our society we have operated under the serious misconception that every one now in our public schools (high school)can, will want to, and will go to college. Nothing could be further from the truth. For years I have championed those young men and women in our schools who do not want, or need, to go to college in order to be successful in their lives as they see and define success where their interests and talents lie. We need plumbers, electricians, carpenters, mechanics, chefs, equipment operators, and so on. These satisfying and often very lucrative careers are not taught in "normal" colleges and universities - anyone had to have a plumber or electrician do some work lately or had to take a car to a mechanic? If we were to go back to a model that allowed those of our students that did want to follow a "traditional" course of higher education - college/university after high school - to follow those careeer paths and plans even in secondary schools then we would all be better off for it. No matter how much someone tries to convince me, I cannot see where four years of math and/or science is a "must" for someone wanting to be a carpenter, mechanic, plumber or electrician. At least that's my opinion.
Thinkinguy writes:
I agree, many kids do not fit in college and have talents and interests in the trades but the bureaucracy knows better.
Years ago, I owned an automotive repair shop along with a partner. We started the business without any help from any government entity, period. We were successful and had a sterling reputation. After we had been in business for a few years, a representative of the WFISD visited us and asked if we would be willing to hire a couple of high school automotive students and provide them with on the job training while "they worked for us." We indicated we might do that and the next thing out of his mouth was a several restrictions on us...supposedly for the safety of the students. He acted as if we did not have enough common sense to protect the kids from injury while in the shop. Safety would have been a major part of their training since both I and my partner were extremely safety conscious. We declined at that point.
So, the bureaucracy was alive and well back in the 80s as it is today.
tdgriffin writes:
Jeff Foxworthy had a Harvard graduate on "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?". The question was, "What is the last federal holiday of the year?". His resoning went something like, "Well, Christmas is a religious holday, so it CAN'T be a federal holiday." So I guess he went with Thanksgiving. Some of the kids who go to college can't be helped by college, but if daddy has the money, or if they can borrow enough, what the hey. We send this type to the White House.
wofum1947 writes:
Something tells me that someone at the TRN is asleep at the switch big time. Of the preceeding nine comments, four belong to yesterdays Editorial and the first five belong to day before yesterday's. Oh, well, what is, is.
Trapper writes:
What would you expect? Remember it IS the River City Rag.
misplacedwichitan writes:
In TRN's defense, I think they are having some server issues. I am having a few proxy errors when reloading the pages. IDK if it's the weather or what, but it is a SLOW work day.
BMAT writes:
Pipe into Throw a Way Cove.
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