Jan. 01, 2004 - 20:28 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Dry Rinse

Newspapers, compendiums of things I don't want to hear or think about. Sometimes it seems so to me.

Seems like the mountain snow pack is below normal as of this date according to the local news. Probably no big deal to many of my countrymen where their rivers run deep and slow and the water table is just a wee bit below the surface of the ground.

Nor does it mean much to those in our Southwest -- the desert states.

In some respects water has always been easy to those of us close to the mountains. Out in our country-side there were ditches dug running from the hills supplying water to the farmers and ranchers. Cities close to our front range of mountains have found water from similar sources or better. Even when I was a kid though when we went east very much the terrain became arid and only where there was water obtainable was there much farming. Sage brush, cactus and tumbleweeds holding on to the dry, drifting earth, little else out east.

People here have been chafing at the watering restrictions in the last few years -- heh.

We didn't get out of town much during the Dust Bowl Days, even in Denver it wasn't pleasant outside -- gritty to the teeth and clogging to the nose. A good amount of our country's precious topsoil went to the Gulf of Mexico through our river system, what didn't make it that far ended up on the river bottoms then. Even in Denver dust would blow in through the keyholes at night leaving a little pile of dust on the floor, same with any windows that were loosely fitted to their openings would produce little drifts of powdery dust on the floor below. That drought took up the better part of ten years and permanently affected the lives of those displaced during that time as well as ravaging our land.

Memories from back then cause me to fret about the low snow pack in our mountains this year. Last season it was only a March blizzard that dumped about three feet of snow in Denver and up to seven feet in the mountains that saved our necks and let us live in reasonable comfort. If we don't get a few really heavy snows in the mountains before spring our reservoirs will be on the empty side.

Thing that bothers me is that our area around Denver has grown by leaps and bounds gaining speed year by year, but the water supply has not kept up with the growth of population and lawns to my way of looking at it. The empty spots in our area are filling rapidly with apartments, condos and new houses and these are all hooking into the water supply.

Seems possible to me that if we fall short of water this year, this whole area will suffer greatly, small things like lawns, trees and shrubs will go by the wayside those things like that which make life comfortable here. I wonder if things will get bad enough that water in tank cars will have to be shipped to town ? Water which obviously will have to go through purification processing to become potable. What will enough water to support human life cost the average Joe ? Even now since they put water meters in here, it is noticeable by the browning of the lawn and shrubbery even in a number of houses in the better off areas that water costs and people are having to make choices. Some choose to Xeriscape (use growths adapted to arid climate), some choose to put in lava rock or quartz and some just let things go.

All one can do is pray for snow in the mountains, rain in plenty through the spring and a slow melt of the snow pack so the water just doesn't disappear from our state in a heavy runoff. Or in a ridiculous extreme learn how to take dust baths with a Dry Rinse . . . . . . . . . .

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