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Wednesday, October 24, 2007
“What a bunch of poop”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The birds poop all over their front porch.
A few days ago, Jo Mackey contacted the county Department of Water Resources. She asked if she could hose down the porch. The female employee said ‘no,’ citing the mandated outdoor water ban that’s been in place since Sept. 28. It was suggested the Buford retirees salvage their shower water and use it.
Jo and Ken Mackey are strict adherents of the water ban. In fact, they were probably water-wise before many of us in parched North Georgia started conserving.
“I’ve been taking a ‘Navy shower’ for years,” Jo Mackey, 73, told me. “Before I married, my water bill was always $13 to $15 a month. Our water bill for both of us is only $25 a month.”
On Monday, Mackey called and asked if I had any pull with the governor’s office. Maybe I could call, she said, and get her an exemption to the water ban so she could clean her porch.
Of course, she was being facetious. Her tongue-in-cheek suggestion led to a discussion that I’d imagine thinking people have been asking themselves since the water crisis has come home to roost.
How did we get here?
Growing up in Georgia, all I heard was how great Atlanta is and would be in the future. The term “international city” preceded reality. Development boomed. Newcomers, foreign and domestic, flocked here, particularly after the 1996 Summer Olympics. They sought jobs, opportunity, affordable houses, and in Gwinnett’s case, good public schools.
Now look at what the 18-month drought has uncovered.
Apparently state and municipal officials have given scant thought to the resources and amount of water necessary for millions to flush toilets, cook, drink and - yes - wash poop off front porches. The issue is about more than bird droppings, though. It’s about water infrastructure, the lack of long-term preparation and planning of it.
Heck, even columnists have to prepare for the expected and the unforeseen. Case in point: The Badie Tour was to accompany Capt. Herb Emory, the WSB traffic reporter, on the sky copter Wednesday morning. Inclement weather grounded us.
We can’t control the rain, but we - the region - could have taken other measures during decades of growth to ward off the current situation.
“They’ll come up with something to address the issue,” said Ken Mackey, 78, a retired Delta auto mechanic. “But it’s about 25 years to late.”
When Mackey was a young man, he remembers a federal study that was done during the era of Richard Russell Jr., the late state senator and governor. It said that five states, including Georgia, would be the most populated states in the southeast due to the availability of water.
“It has come to pass, just not as big as [Russell] thought,” he said. “But nobody picked up on it.”
By no means are the Mackeys making light of the water issue. They are put off, though, with the lack of recommended water-saving initiatives that could have been enacted decades ago, but weren’t.
What a bunch of poop.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@
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