Elevated levels of methane and other stray gases have been found in drinking water near natural gas wells in Pennsylvania’s gas-rich Marcellus shale region, according to new research. In the case of methane, concentrations were six times higher in some drinking water found within one kilometer of drilling operations.
“The bottom line is strong evidence for gas leaking into drinking water in some cases,” Robert Jackson, an environmental scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., told NBC News. “We think the likeliest explanation is leaky wells,” he added.
Producing natural gas from shale rock formations involves a technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that shoots several million gallons of water laced with chemicals and sand deep underground to break apart chunks of shale, freeing trapped gas to escape through cracks and fissures into wells.
I guess we can just buy bottled water from multinational corps.
kindness
I guess this is a feature not a bug (to some corporations out there).
c u n d gulag
I look forward to the coming joint venture between the Koch Brothers, and the bottled-water division of PepsiCo!
And maybe they’ll have some “Shower Water,” that won’t be as “pure” as their bottled drinking water, for people who simply insist on bathing or showering.
eldorado
brawndo – the thirst mutilator
Cacti
Cole’s first post of the day – 0 content on the voting rights act.
Just not that important when you’re a brogressive, I guess.
So, what’s Conor Friedersdorf up to today?
wmd
But the companies doing the fracking always do a fantastic job with “casing” the drill holes, there’s no way the methane is coming from the wells.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Cacti: We have two posts up about it. The effects of fracking are important too. It’s a little hard to vote if your coughing up wads of bloody tissue at the hospital.
Cacti
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
How many posts have we had from Cole, Mistermix, and Anne Laurie about NSA/Edward Snowden?
Stone silence from the lot of them on the VRA.
Baud
Apparently, Obama’s climate change speech is being well-received — and ignored by all three cable news networks.
Forum Transmitted Disease
That is the plan. Buy stock in Coke and Nestle. Nestle in particular is the biggest offender in privatizing water.
askew
@Cacti:
I’d rather a post about Obama’s climate speech, since VRA has been covered here in 2 posts alread. He made a lot of news today. Unfortunately, the only network to carry it live was The Weather Channel.
MikeJ
@Cacti:
Too, too many.
Which doesn’t mean they should go from wall to wall snowden to wall to wall VRA.
wmd
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Nestle supplied the water in the water coolers at Netroots Nation.
Is Kos in on this? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
PeakVT
@Cacti: Are you being an asshole for any particular reason? Why don’t you GYOFB, where you’ll be free to put up as many posts as you want in the first four fucking hours following each and every SCOTUS decision.
Baud
He left out clean drinking water.
Just Some Fuckhead
John, dance to my tune or I shall be forced to call you names and make subtle accusations of racism.
Cassidy
There’s nothing in there about Obama being history’s greatest monster and the dynamic duo of Snowden and Greenwald winning the universe. Am I in the right place?
Cacti
@PeakVT:
Or maybe I’ll just say what I want on this one, even if you don’t like it, self-appointed hall monitor.
Cacti
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Speaking of brogressives, right on cue.
different-church-lady
Well sure, if they can find any un-fracking-contaminated stuff.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
What happens now? I’m guessing the state legislature passes a law making it a capital crime to check drinking water in Pennsylvania.
askew
@Cacti:
Lordy, please don’t let Anne Laurie write something on VRA. That won’t end well.
And truthfully what else is left to say? The Supreme Court is full of lunatics. The GOP in Congress won’t do anything. States are already announcing their voter suppression plans.
I’d love to see a push for a national voting protection law or for some rich Dem donors to set-up a new version of ACORN to register voters and get them to the polls.
Rob
Clean drinking water is socialism!
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Yeah, because what we really need is one more post on that. It’s impermissible to have a post on anything but what Cacti deems the most important topic of the moment.
Butch
Actually a couple of nights ago the Daily Show aired a clip from the head of the German company (Nestle, maybe? I forgot) that produces much of the bottled water sold in the U.S. He was explaining that since water is a commodity of course it should be sold rather than be available free, because according to him then you recognize its value. So you weren’t joking.
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
Right.
More NSA threads please. Edward Snowden is being lynched!
Andrew Sullivan and Gleen Greenwald had a slap fight!
True Blood is teh awesome!
John Cole
@Cacti: Maybe I just don’t have anything intelligent to say about the decision? Not that has stopped me before, but really, what am I supposed to say- the neo-confederate wing of the Supreme Court along with the swing-vote sociopath Kennedy determined we are in a post-racial America. Nothing surprising that they did it, nothing surprising that it was those five.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
If you want to talk about the VRA, why not go to one of the posts about the VRA? Is it really that hard?
Gus
A buddy of mine is working in Western North Dakota in the Bakken shale formation. He says that it’s gonna be a wasteland for the foreseeable future after they’ve extracted all the fossil fuels they can.
Cacti
@askew:
Whatever it is, I’m certain it will be the President’s fault.
Steve in the ATL
Chiilax, Cacti. You are being a douchebag for no good reason. Unless you are filling in for T&H today.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
@Cacti:
I think the point is that if you don’t like what the people who run this blog are doing, then you might be better off reading something else, or even writing your own blog. It’s kind of cheesy to come here and whine that the guy who gives up a lot of his time to run this site isn’t meeting your exacting standards.
scav
Cactaceae cleatly prefers quantity to quality in commenting and posting and is living up (choose a direction) to personal aspirations. We have truly been blessed in the number of perfect entities coming here and explaining their perfection unto us. Let us give Hosannahs. getting a bit hard to type though from all the glare. . .
The prophet Nostradumbass
@John Cole: Cacti is just trying out his thread-derailing starter kit he received this morning.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole:
SNIP!
Post that right there, John, and link to a picture of the KKK standing guard at a southern polling place. That’ll be twice as long as the average DougJ post and everyone wins!
ETA: Don’t forget a snappy title like “Who Put The Cacti Up Your Ass?”
Comrade Jake
Rob’s a pretty careful guy. Same too for Avner Vengosh.
The thing is, the oil companies should be very concerned about these findings. They don’t want the stuff leaking out – forget about the environmental impact – leaks cost them money.
Roger Moore
@Gus:
That would be a more shocking prediction if he weren’t talking about Western North Dakota.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Gus: and, now we’re getting ads about investing in it.
Cassidy
@PeakVT: @Roger Moore: I can’t speak for Cacti, but personally, I’m just shooting for a Greenwald-esque “I’m drunk, I hate you all, go fuck yourself, I love my dogs, but fucking hate you” post. Someone mentioned we hadn’t had one in a while and they’re right. If we time it right, we can get it to coincide with the whiskey drinking that will be happening on Friday.
Violet
@Butch:
Water rights are going to be a huge issue this century. Countries in places like the Middle East, where water is more scarce, will be doing what they can to get water. Saudi Arabia is already buying wheat, though they used to grow their own, as a way to avoid using their water resources to grow things instead of provide water for people’s direct needs. They are in essence buying water via wheat.
There is some truth to what the German guy says in that if you have to pay for it you tend to be more careful with it. But people cannot live without water, so that puts water in a different category from a lot of things. It’s a requirement for life.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead: lol
Cacti
@John Cole:
Mostly just wondering if you’d even noticed, what with the lack of drones and Glenn Greenwald involvement.
burnspbesq
Everything is connected to everything. Minority voters, who by and large can’t afford to buy bottled water and whole-house filtration systems, are (one hopes) more likely to vote for legislators who would take a strong stand on water-quality issues. So Big Energy has a stake in suppressing their votes. Etc. Elections have consequences, and you only have a say in what those consequences are if you have and exercise the right to vote. Rinse and repeat.
PeakVT
@Cassidy: Maybe Cole can set up a special drunk-blogging feed for the site. Though he’d be the only one using it now that SP&T is too far gone to even post.
Butch
@Violet: I think sometimes my writing is a little too telegraphic. I didn’t mean to imply that I think it has no value, but was only commenting on a guy who thinks everything is for sale. I used to live in the mountains of Colorado and got to be real familiar with water rights….
quannlace
Silly me. I don’t recall seeing anything about Snowden here todAY.
slag
@Cacti: And not a single sentence from you yet on the 13-hour filibuster of the Texas abortion bill: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/06/25/yeeeeah-watch-wendy-davis-try-to-fillibuster-texass-goddawful-abortion-restriction-bill. Apparently, such a thing doesn’t matter to a “brogressive” like yourself. Or might it just be possible that you don’t write down every single thought that enters your head?
Cacti
@quannlace:
You didn’t scroll down to AL’s early morning thread apparently.
Cassidy
I saw a move once called Tooth and Nail. It was a fairly decent entry in the 8 Films to Die For series. The premise is that the world fell apart, not because of war or zombies or plague, but the oil ran out. And when that happen, other resources, water, food, etc., ran out as well. The movie itself focused on a group of survivors who are targeted by cannibals, so it’s not really that unique, but I always found the premise fascinating because it’s the most realistic: we run out of something vital and we turn on one another to hoard the rest.
But, even if you’re a survivalist and build a bunker with food, water, weapons & ammo, and fuel, it will still run out.
Violet
@Butch: I got what you meant, but it struck me that although I disagree with his tendency to turn everything into a commodity, there is some truth in what he’s saying, in part anyway.
Water rights issues in the US are going to pale in comparison to water rights issues elsewhere. This is a big country and people can move to other parts of it relatively easily. If you live in, say, Syria but there isn’t enough water for everyone there, what do you do? What do the governments do? Governments will fall over water issues.
Poopyman
Better check where the Deer park sources are, dude. New Tripoli, PA?
gene108
@Violet:
Devil’s advocate question:
We pay for food and it’s a requirement of life. Why should water be any different?
***********************************
Anyway, West Virginia has been mined for over 150 years and nature has reclaimed a lot of the old mined out hillsides, which makes for some lovely scenic views in WV.
None of the scarring from man made activities is going to last for generations and generations. Hell, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki have bounced back.
joes527
@quannlace:
Well then you must have Cacti and Cassidy pied. That’s all they seem to be able to talk about.
Cassidy
@PeakVT: He could PPV that shit.
quannlace
@gene108:
We already do. Don’t you get a water bill every month?
Just Some Fuckhead
@gene108: No one has to pay for food. They are paying for convenience. Anyone can choose not to pay for convenient food and then forage or hunt or grow it themselves.
Just Some Fuckhead
@joes527:
He finally calms down and then you gotta go and spin him up again!
Violet
@gene108: Don’t most people pay for water? We pay for water where I live. It isn’t free. That’s tap water–the stuff running to the house.
There’s no particular difference in water and food (as in one should be free, the other not), but if one had to choose, water is the more important of the two to human life. We can last longer without food than water.
But there is also no benefit to humans for corporations to bottle all the water–at great expense and use of water resources in the bottling of the water. It’s fine if bottled water is an option, but it should not be the only option.
People need water to live, therefore it seems to me that one of the roles of government would be to make sure a system is available to provide water to people. In emergencies it’s one of the first things provided.
Alex S.
@Cacti:
And ONCE AGAIN, John COAL of West Virginia STOMPED on one of Kay’s posts like a KKK member on a black woman.
Mike E
I’m having a hard time discerning who’s a troll on this site anymore. I guess it’s me!
@burnspbesq: That’s pretty a cogent summary of how our “corporate democracy” works, kudos.
Cassidy
@joes527: Shit< I wish we had talked less about St Glenn of Greenwald and the Exalted Grand High Blower of the Invisible Whistle of Already Known Information (All hail be his Rand!). Unfortunately, a number of people including some of our FPers decided to have their own version of The Purge and go full metal firebagger for a couple of days. So now, I’ts just nice to make fun.
Cacti
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Wow, a rare moment of agreement.
JSF is quite correct in that you are paying someone else for the trouble of growing crops, raising and slaughtering livestock, etc. It’s one of the principal modern conveniences for which people are willing to pay a premium.
If you’re connected to a municipal water system, you’re paying for access to the city’s distribution and purification systems, not for the water itself. My parents live in a rural area and have well water. Their associated costs are the electricity needed for the pump system that draws it out of the well and into the pipes.
Gravenstone
@Cacti: And Snowdenpalozza broke a couple weeks ago, giving folks ample time to compose and post through the various twists and turns. Whilst the gutting of VRA section 4 is only hours old. Mellow the fuck out, it’ll get addressed ad nauseum in the coming hours or days.
eta: scrolled through the rest of the thread before hitting submit on the off chance you came to your senses. No such luck. So kindly find the largest conflagration nearest your proximity, and leap into it with all due haste.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Cacti:
Or they can put a cistern out and collect rainwater for free.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike E:
Excellent point. If you don’t know who the troll is, it’s you.
Roger Moore
@Violet:
Which is an entirely sensible way of operating. Crops require enormous amounts of water to grow. The first estimate I saw suggested that it takes between 500 and 4000 kilograms of water to grow one kilogram of wheat, and Saudi Arabia’s climate probably puts it toward the high end of that range. It’s a lot easier to ship the crop than the water to grow it.
And in most places where water is scarce, people do pay for it. But direct human usage is fairly small, so even a substantial price increase wouldn’t make the actual cost of survival much higher. Even most domestic water usage is for watering, not for human consumption or sanitation. You could probably increase domestic water costs 10x without making it unaffordable for people to drink, use the toilet, or shower.
Gravenstone
@quannlace: False equivalence. Municipal water bills are primarily to pay for the infrastructure required to bring the water to your location, minimally for the water itself.
quannlace
Due to the increasing power outages (due to super storms and heat waves) I don’t envy anybody who has to rely on a well.
But then, Hurricane Sandy’s floods inundated some of the New York City’s water system, so nobody gets off scott-free.
joes527
@Cacti:
I’m guessing that you don’t live in the West.
Baud
Emma
@Violet: Until recently, people didn’t pay for water. We paid for the infrastructure to get water to us in an urban setting.
The problem is that until very recently, that was handled by the government. No longer. And the history of privatizing water is really, really lousy: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/article/corporate-history-water-privatization.
http://sls.sagepub.com/content/13/2/265.short
http://www.serconline.org/waterPrivatization/fact.html
Emma
I’m in moderation? And not even a single obscenity?
Haydnseek
@Cassidy: And should hand tools or sharp kitchen utensils be involved, a new appreciation for the meaning of true blood…….
joes527
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Possibly not. If you don’t own the water rights to your land (and you probably don’t) then this is a no-no.
Individuals can get away with it, but when whole communities try it, the water right holders in their watershed tend to get a bit upset.
Violet
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’s illegal in Colorado.
Cassidy
@Haydnseek: That would be funny, but losing a thumb would severly deter the twitter feed and, therefore, my amusement. Plus, I kind of like the Cole guy.
Cassidy
@joes527: @Violet: Bullshit. Seriously?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
Maybe that’s fuckin’ why ETA: See?
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Unless you live in an area that has to import water, like many places in the Southwest, in which case you’re also buying the water itself from whomever has the rights to it.
I am not a kook
@John Cole: John Cole, since you outed yourself reading comments…
Why can’t the troll that infests the comments (you know which one I mean) to only spew toxic shit and ad hominems be put out to pasture?
Cassidy
@Cassidy: OTOH, who here can’t see a 3am post-scotch series of tweets wondering if he’s covered in blood, will Anna Paquin come and lick it off….
Violet
@Just Some Fuckhead:
If all the people who live in a large city suddenly had to hunt and forage for their food there would not be enough food to go around. One of the things agriculture did for humans is allow them to outsource the food-getting to others so that people could focus on other things. It also led to permanent communities and more people living in those communities.
If a few people decided to live off the grid and hunt and forage then it wouldn’t have a lot of impact. If everyone did it our society would have to change.
Roger Moore
@Emma:
More than three links automatically puts you in moderation.
PeakVT
@Emma: More than three links (including one to a commenter).
MomSense
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I have friends whose private wells have dried up–and it has absolutely nothing to do with the giant water sucking production facility Poland Spring has near their homes.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Violet:
So? It changed to get where it is.
Emma
@Roger Moore (and others): thanks, everyone!
gene108
@quannlace: @Violet: @Just Some Fuckhead:
Water fountains people.
That’s what bottled water originally was competing against. Why would someone pay for a bottle of water, when they could walk to a water fountain and get a drink of water for free?
There was a time no one would pay for a drink of water. We’d go to the water fountain and even wait in line for a bit to get a drink of water or fill up our cup or container.
There’s no food equivalent to the water fountain.
What the snippet of the Nestle guy, on The Colbert Report, basically gets to is to have a unit price for water. To treat water as a commodity, like wheat or corn or any other food stuff, which is usually sold as discrete units, i.e. 2 watermelons, a pound of steak, etc.
We get charged from some of our water usage, by the utility company, but that’s generally regulated with regards to what they can charge and I believe is mostly set up to cover costs of operations, rather than to turn the sort of profit food producers are able to make.
Haydnseek
@Cassidy: Yeah, so do I. The stooge-like accidents have become a feature, not a bug. I’ve grown fond of the big lug myself.
joes527
@Cassidy: Seriously.
It actually makes sense when you think it through. There are two ways to share water.
1) folks upstream can take as much as they want, and folks downstream get what’s left (if any)
2) the right to use water is managed throughout the watershed, and just because you are upstream doesn’t mean you are allowed take whatever you can.
Those damn soc1alists out West often go with door #2
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
Seriously. Under Western water law, water goes to people in order of seniority of their water rights, even if it doesn’t fall on their property. You can keep precipitation that soaks in, but you aren’t allowed to collect and store it beyond that; that water probably belongs to somebody else.
Violet
@Cassidy: From the Colorado Division of Water Resources website on water rights:
Just Some Fuckhead
@gene108:
Blackberry bushes and mice. They are invasive.
joes527
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, but I think my HOA would frown on me taking rabbits in the neighborhood. (though they do look tasty)
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
Beat me to it.
In the arid regions of the country, first in time is first in right when it comes to water. There have also been numerous historical court fights between AZ and CA over who gets what from the lower Colorado River.
Narcissus
@gene108: Water fountains are almost as rare as phone booths these days.
Chyron HR
@I am not a kook:
How will he pay his bills with ad revenue if he bans 90% of the reader base?
Roger Moore
@joes527:
Really? I’d think that all the gardeners in the neighborhood would be happy to get rid of the vermin, provided you did it in a way that didn’t disturb them directly (e.g. traps).
Neutron Flux
@John Cole: That was a reasonable reply. Why do you do that?
Capri
@gene108: Not to mention Chernobyl – now a huge refuge for Eurasian wildlife. It’s not even been 50 years.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Water fountains, drinking fountains, or bubblers?
Haydnseek
@Capri: From what I understand, the nine-eyed elk with glow-in-the-dark antlers is especially prized by hunters.
schrodinger's cat
OT: I just checked the Dish after a long long time. Sullivan is back to pimping “The Bell Curve”, also his earnings are going to fall short of their initial target. I give him a couple of more months before he folds tent and is in the warm embrace of Slate or some other purveyor of conventional wisdom.
gene108
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Berry bushes, rodents and insects weren’t installed by a contractor, during the man made construction of a building, which is supplied water by man made sewage / water treatment system and maintained in working order by other humans.
Water usage has not been turned into the sort of profit center food is, even though there’s just as much or more work going into getting us potable water to drink, as their is getting us food to eat.
We’re assigned some cost for the usage of the service to provide us water, but the providers of water aren’t able to or expected to make the sort of profits providers of food are expected to make.
Emma
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bolivia/timeline.html
Nothing good comes of privatizing water infrastructure. Ever.
And if the World Bank is for it, I’m agin’ it. Until it has been debated to death. Which this hasn’t.
Roger Moore
@Neutron Flux:
It drives trolls nuts.
gene108
@Capri:
If life on Earth can recover from the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, there’s not much we can do to hurt Mother Nature.
We may make ourselves extinct and take some other species with us, in the process, but Mother Nature will produce new and wondrous life forms to take our place.
Violet
@Just Some Fuckhead: Oh, sure. Society can change and if everyone suddenly became a hunter gatherer then it would have to. Life as we know it would change. Foraging and hunting all your food takes a lot of time. People would have a lot less time for pastimes like spending time on the internet or playing tennis or even reading a book.
Living in cities would not be an advantage, since masses of people together would decrease your change of finding food. Society would change dramatically. Can happen, of course. Never said it couldn’t. It would be radical, though.
Nutella
@Violet:
In among the silly trolling and vicious infighting, entertaining as they can be, sometimes this blog provides fascinating information. I had no idea that saving the water that runs off your own roof could be illegal.
Thanks.
Neutron Flux
@Roger Moore: I see. Carry on.
Cassidy
@joes527: @Roger Moore: @Violet: Well, no shit. I’d have never thought that catching rain water could be illegal. God we lived in a fucked up country.
Violet
@Nutella: You’re welcome! As an avid organic gardener with a rainwater collection system, I was fascinated to learn that it’s illegal in Colorado. Obviously I don’t live in CO. I get their rationale, but from an ecosystem point of view, I also don’t think they’ve thought it all the way through.
Saving rainwater for landscape use is a more sensible use of resources than taking that same water, processing it in a plant and then sending it back out to people to use on their gardens. Small scale rainwater harvesting would save the middle step and ultimately be better for the environment.
Tractarian
omg JOSE CANSECO WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG
https://twitter.com/JoseCanseco/statuses/309032228065775617
joes527
@gene108: with the exception of building a desalination (or possibly toilet-to-tap) plant, there is no way to “farm” water. If I put effort into running a farm, I am actually making more usable food. If I put effort into building water infrastructure, I may be more efficiently moving around what is already there, but I am not adding a drop, and I am probably drying out someone downstream.
And yeah, water from a desalination plan is going to cost you $$ (just like food)
Just Some Fuckhead
@Violet: Remind me: what was the overarching theme we were arguing about and which side was I on?
Violet
@Just Some Fuckhead: I wasn’t arguing with you at all. Sorry to disappoint.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Violet: No disappointment. I just wanted to be consistent if I had staked out a position.
Violet
@Just Some Fuckhead: Not sure. I guess you’ll have to go through the thread to figure it out.
Francis
@joes527: Actually, if you cut down on evaporative losses, the only loser is a more moist atmosphere. Since humidity is self-regulating (too high and it rains), reducing evap losses is a no-less way of farming water. (It’s also the hardest to do.)
Mino
EPA has a similar study sitting on a desk. Never published. Wonder why?
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
Western water law is weird to somebody who isn’t familiar with it, but it’s something people have been working on since Moorish Spain, so it has a track record. It does a good job of providing a legal foundation for what to do when there isn’t enough water to go around. Some of the rules don’t make sense until you’ve actually tried to live with it.
Trollhattan
@Gus:
True. And all we’re going to hear about is N.D.’s point-zero-zero-two unemployment rate (aint it great? shouldn’t everyone be able to get in on the action?) and nary a word about all these gas-field workers baing crammed into trailers because there’s no housing, much less how they’re whoring the actual state they’re living atop.
Extraction industries are always boom-bust. Always. Does anybody give a shit we’re eating mercury left over from the California Gold Rush nearly two centuries ago? I do, but whose butt am I supposed to kick?
Anne Laurie
@Violet:
Hell, the Great Lakes states were on to this in the mid-1980s. Gutting the Great Lakes Charter was one of the key reasons why Koch Industries was willing to spend so much corporate cash electing sockpuppets in Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, etc.
JoyfulA
@Roger Moore: Water rights: Another good reason to stay east of the Mississippi.
Origuy
@gene108:
West Virginia gets a lot more rain than North Dakota; some places recover more slowly than others. There are tank tracks in the Mojave from training during World War II. There are places where lead contamination is left over from the Roman Empire.
Anne Laurie
@Emma:
Three links is the limit, and each “reply” counts as a link. FYWP is a jealous deity.
Roger Moore
@JoyfulA:
Propose a better system or STFU.
johnny aquitard
@Violet:
It is, for the people who live where it rains. For the people living in a city in an arid place, it’s such a drag, man, really crimps their lifestyle. Those nice lush green suburban lawns in a naturally arid landscape must be watered.
The question shouldn’t be “why is it illegal to catch rainwater”, It should be “why are lawns so green in Denver, Phoenix, and LA?” They live in a fucking near-desert. Fifteen inches of rain a year in Denver. Thirteen in LA. Why do these places even have alien artifacts like green lawns? The city of Denver didn’t bother to mandate water meters in homes until the 80’s. And suburban Englewood still doesn’t.
It isn’t just lawns. But those lawns are a pretty good indicator of the attitudes toward water use in these places. They’re living and building in a near-desert as if they weren’t.
Maybe the the real question is “what the fuck is wrong with these morons?”
Apparently it’s much easier to force a relatively few, less empowered people to stop doing something commonsense than it is to make the more connected, more numerous people stop doing something stupid.
EthylEster
@Gus wrote: wasteland…
I learned from CBC’s The Nature of Things some things I did not know about fracking wells. They are tiny, having a footprint of about a 10 foot square. So they drill a zillion of them. I saw some pics of places in Canada that are pocked with these fuckers.
Also too…in Canada you don’t get the mineral rights when you buy land! These wells are being built close to schools, hospitals, you name it. The Canadians sound more up in arms that the USA folks.
EthylEster
@Comrade Jake: I think they ARE concerned AND we have the technology to build wells that don’t leak. The problem (as always) is to get the drillers to follow the (safety) rules. They just want to get wells in fast and pump like crazy.
EthylEster
@Cacti wrote:
We do not pay a premium for food. It is relatively cheap here (due to federal subsidies).
Moreover, most people could NOT raise the food themselves for what it costs to buy it from the grocery store.
EthylEster
@Roger Moore: One of the rules that seems counter-intuitive to me is the E WA law that says “use it or lose it”. so if you own rights to certain water, you MUST show that you are using it or else you will lose your rights. Does not promote conservation.
magurakurin
@gene108:
Gun to head. Pull trigger.
First of all, water isn’t free. People buy it. And the price has gone up slowly but surely through my 50 years here on Earth.
And what exactly is your point? It is kind of obvious that the “Earth” is going to survive anything we do to it (barring setting off so many nukes that we shift it out of orbit.) But when people talk about “saving the Earth,” they are talking about preserving the environment for the people that are here now. Yes, in several generations the scars may well have healed in West Virginia, but that didn’t do much for the people who had to live there in the intervening period of horrid shittiness. And the comment about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that’s just fucked up. Yes, nations, communities, people all eventually recover from the horror of warfare, but, you know, not having the war would clearly be a better choice.
Is your point, “don’t sweat the small stuff, eventually your great-great-great grandchildren will be able to have fresh water to drink again?”
moderateindy
@eldorado:
You mean use water…like out of the toilet
Brawndo, it’s got electrolytes, it’s what plants crave