Leaky Pipes and Our Growing Water Problem

Unless you have been living under a river rock for the past couple of years, you've noticed that we've been in a severe drought. Anyone who enjoys spending time on any of our numerous lakes and rivers can provide anecdotal evidence of the decline of water levels over the past few years. One of the most stark reminders for me of this phenomenon is the floating dock at the landing on the Congaree at the end of Rosewood Drive here in Columbia. The pilings to which the dock is attached tower over my head as I pull my kayak to the end of the boat dock, reminding me of the potential torrent the Congaree can become. Then, as I paddle into the middle of the river and get out of my boat I find I'm only standing ankle-deep in water. It's depressing.

However, despite my own selfish concerns for the river levels, there are also real concerns for Columbia and cities across the Southeast. Today American Rivers, a conservation group whose website can be found here, released a report outlining possible solutions for our drought-based water supply problems. The report, which can be found here, outlines 9 basic conservation measures that can save Columbia up to 27 million gallons of water per day. Those conservations measures are: (1) fixing leaky pipes (which account for up to 14% of our total yearly water use); (2) retrofitting buildings with new appliances (which account for about 20% of our total yearly water use); (3) smart landscaping (we use about 30% of our drinking-quality water watering lawns each year); (4) increasing the cost of water (we are capitalists after all, despite what Hank Paulson tells you); (5) metering all water users instead of allowing shared-use buildings to charge a flat fee for water usage; (6) increasing public understanding of our water challenges; (7) returning more of our saved water to rivers (they liken it to a water "savings account"); (8) involve water users in decisions about water policy (localized democracy...scary to the elites); and (9) build smarter in the future.

Sounds like a good plan, especially considering that a healthy supply of water is absolutely necessary to preserve any shred of our current way of life. My prediction, though, is that we'll build more dams and pray for rain. See, I'm beginning to realize that human nature tends to be reactionary. No matter how much we understand a problem, we are not apt to fix it until we feel the consequences. This is a sad truth, mainly because we have very smart people spending their time coming up with reports like this one and a whole bunch of people who will promptly ignore them. This complacency is endemic to our representative, republican form of government. We give more power than we have to to people and trust them to make these decisions for us. The problem is that we groan when those people actually ask for our money to implement the solutions and god forbid they start telling us to do things like fix our pipes or buy a new dishwasher.

For too long America has tried to have it both ways. We entrust our government to strangers and resist them when they do their jobs. In turn, they give up trying and just try to find other ways out of the problem. We end up with a massive national debt and a weak economy, then we turn to them to fix it. This is why I think the single greatest recommendation made by American Rivers is to involve the end consumers in the process of formulating water policy. This will cause people to become better educated through a public debate, they will see the consequences of the decisions before those consequences arise, and the people can have their solutions they way the people want them to be.

Direct democracy is not an easy thing to pull off. We are busy people and often perceive that we have little time to govern ourselves. But if we want to remain a free society, we must begin to democratize parts of our lives that we once entrusted to representatives.