Good Luck to Georgia! (Washington, White: insurance, house, neighborhood)

[janette moss]

It is my understanding that representatives from Georgia will be going to the White House on Thursday, November 1, 2007 in order to resolve the water dispute. I pray that this crisis will be resolved between Georgia, Florida and Alabama. The seriousness of this should surely get recognition. It's not just about the mussells, but also about the "muscles" of the White House picking up Georgia (and other suffering states) in a time of need.

[harry chickpea]

Georgia is acting like the grasshopper in the grasshopper and ant story. Its "time of need" is self-inflicted by politicians and developers promoting rapid and unsustainable growth and ignoring the eventual consequences. The leaders of the once-great state should be hanging their heads in shame for acting so irresponsibly. While I feel sorry for the citizens that have to deal with the aftermath of this poor planning, I think their frustration would serve a far better purpose if it was directed at ousting the influence of mega-developers and tax-hungry politicians within the state, than complaining that people and businesses in neighboring states aren't suffering as badly as they are.

Georgians need to get their act together and not depend on some magical intervention from above. It becomes sadly humorous when climatologists and insurance analysts consider once-in-a-hundred-year events, and people repeatedly become startled that those events might actually happen at least once in a hundred years. Florida went there (and instituted a better building code after hurricane Andrew), New Orleans went there (and still hasn't figured out what to do about severe weather), and now Georgia is looking down the parched throat of a drought. The long-term solution won't come from Washington. It didn't in Florida, and it hasn't in New Orleans.

[4notch]

harry chickpea: Amen. I live outside the perimeter in an area that's being heavily developed. We brought this on ourselves. We can't prevent a drought, but a little planning, foresight, and restraint (in terms of development) would've greatly reduced the emergency. Mussels aren't our problem. Developers, stupid politicians, and wasteful residents/businesses are.

We live in heavily treed, older development. We've been discovered by developers, who strip beautiful lots of all their trees and topsoil and install sod. Which turns brown in August. So they soak it with our drinking water. Ditto for idiotic homeowners and business-owners. Multiply this tactic thousands of times across northwest Georgia. Even if there wasn't a drought, we would have water problems at some point anyway.

I'm actually starting to be glad this drought happened. (My yard is xeriscaped; I watered all of five times this summer and everything still looks pretty good.) Maybe it'll knock some sense into a few people. Heavily urbanized-suburbanized areas require planning and good management, something that, unfortunately, Southerners aren't known for. (And I'm a Southerner.)

[Georgia]

One must have to laugh or in this case cry.
The news this morning mentioned again about the Georgia delegation going to the castle to beg for riches from the empire, like Harry stated in a round about way, looking for government to solve their problems.

The part that fried my peas was the statement about the Georgia statehouse initiating a statewide, across the board, watering ban. This would affect both consumer and commercial customers, but wait!!!!

Your friendly neighborhood "developer" can continue to water for the 30 day timeframe providind they re-apply for their permits. Ahhhh, how sweet. the developers once again do not have to play by the rules but by the time you do the math on the loophole, will get an additional 30 days on top of what they have already had to water, water, water, and water the blacktop, so it can run down the storm drain (remember the storm water tax of 2007-2010) and continue to dry up the streams and clog traffic at high speed pace.

Maybe when we are dry as dirt with 15 million packed in here like sardines, our statehouse can look even more to Uncle Sam.

Go figure