The Water Issue

The Water Issue

So I think I have finally figured out what the major political issue of our time is that no one is talking about. It’s water. Now I know you are thinking “Ira has gone off the deep end (pun intended) on this one” but hear me out.

Two thirds of our planet is covered in water. 65% of the human body…water. Blood, 92% water. You can live without a lot of things but water is not one of them.

Depending upon where you live, you’ve got too much water, not enough water, polluted water, lead (and other chemicals) in the water, plastic water bottles in the water, waters that flood, waters that erode the beaches, waters that slide down mountains bring parts of the mountain along for the ride, lots and lots of problems with water. Right now in the California farming region, there’s not enough water. In that area, they now drill for water like you drill for oil. Maybe someday they will build massive water pipelines to carry the water just like oil. They have drilled so deep for water that some people believe that they have now destabilized the earth so much that area is going to become one giant sinkhole.

Than there are parts of the west coast where the problem is not enough water during the summer, which causes massive wildfires, and too much water in the fall, which causes massive mudslides where those wildfires took place. In the midwest, the Mississippi River flooded in December. Why? Too much water. Floods are not uncommon along the rivers in our country but in the spring, not in the early winter. Doesn’t really matter when they occur just that there is too much water.

In the coastal regions, you’ve got rising ocean waters and massive beach erosion. But they’ve got a solution for that – the Army Corp of Engineers. These folks drill for sand, pump it onto the beach and guess what happens a few years later? Water…the ocean waters take back the sand that was pumped onto those beaches, and the whole process starts all over again, which is just great for the Army Corp of Engineers and the folks who houses sit on those beaches. As for the folks who pay the taxes to have these beaches replenished year after year…not so great. After all, they pay taxes in cash…not water. Eventually, the ocean waters are supposed to rise so much it really won’t matter how much sand you pump onto those beaches.

Of course, there’s water pollution. For years, people used any and every body of water they saw as a garbage can or maybe they thought the local river was a toilet bowl. You just throw shit in and watch it float away. No harm no foul…and than no fowl, no fish, no nothing. Just dead bodies of water.

A study was just published that stated by 2050, there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. Just think about that for a moment. I’m sure a good portion of all that plastic clogging up our oceans will be plastic water bottles. I guess there’s some irony in that…or more like bad karma.

And than there’s Flint, Michigan. What a friggin’ disaster that is. There’s very few things in life you expect as a citizen of the USA and one of those is the water coming out of your tap will not be filled with lead. For drinking water, residents now get bottled water (and just where will all those plastic water bottles end up???) but they face a long and expensive process to fix the problem, in a city that is one of the most depressed in our country.

I’m thinking this is just the tip of the iceberg (which is made of water), when it comes to these kinds of issues. I read in today’s paper that our country is going to have to spend over $200,000,000,000 (that’s billions) to fix our antiquated sewage system. Instead of replenishing beaches, maybe the Army Corps of Engineers should be thinking about that.

Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to all these water issues. As I’ve said so many times before, you can’t fight Mother Nature and you can’t screw with her either. I just know that our water issues are something we’ve ignored for too long and now we are drowning in them.