[The following, written by Synthesis weekly columnist Julia Murphy, appeared in the Synthesis Weekly on Monday, July 7th, 2008. Julia can be reached at ninjatreehugger@gmail.com

Water and Power

Driving from Chico to Oroville, the air seemed to get steadily worse, or that might just have been the ability to see (or in this case, to not see) a further horizon, driving on 149 and 70. As I drove, I was excited to have the chance to witness the Butte County Water Commission and BC Department of Water Resource Conservation air their doins in the County Seat.
Oroville: spiritual home of MC Oroville — I always get excited going there.

I was late, so I missed the discussions on the General Plan; some talk of including a Water Element in the Plan came around again near the end of the meeting. More on that later. Maybe.
Paul Gosselin, director of BCWRC, was talking about drought preparedness as I rolled in. This is a hot, dry potato. At the time of this writing, it is the first day of fire season proper. Paraphrasing Gosselin’s “The Next Drought Season Is Here,” from the BCWRC’s newsletter “Water Solutions,” our governor declared a drought on June 4th of this year. What does this mean? At this point it means promoting conservation, moving water to critical areas, increasing fire protection and assessing impacts to communities and agriculture.
What, exactly, does “promoting conservation” mean? Does it mean PSAs telling you not to run the faucet when you brush your teeth? Or does it mean water rationing? And, by the by, I don’t see water rationing as a draconian measure of totalitarian government run amok. On the contrary, I think rationing might, in fact, be a crash course in Water Appreciation 101. As I cinch my tinfoil hat down tighter, I’d go so far as to say that our kids (if not us) will all have to adjust to water rationing someday.

More after the jump. (more…)

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