Aug. 11, 2002 - 22:12 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Ashes

The forest fires have been widespread this year, occurring as vegetation dried to tinder because of lack of water. The heat generated was immensely intense.

Seems to me though that the heat going skyward from the fires will be small flickers compared to the flames of various finger pointing writings now coming into print.

Each point of view tries to blame either The Sierra Club, lumber outfits, forest service people and government policies of forest management.

Some are doing a combination thing, picking any two of the above and blaming away. But I don't see too much of problem solving from any of them. Uproar mostly.

Looks to me as if most all of them are to blame. The per centage may not be equal for each one, but there is blame enough to go around. Conservationist tree hugger types and wildlife protectionists had a great deal to do with our forests being so thick, Sierra Club too. Lumber companies can be blamed more for their clear cutting operations than the fires, but in recent years there has been a trend of lumbering by thinning. Forest Service people have made their slip ups too. Federal government not allocating enough money to do the job. I also think the the feds should have put out rfq's a long time ago for aircraft slurry bombers made for that purpose alone. Also I think the forest service arm needs more money to do their jobs. People who have built in our mountains, cabins shaded by trees are part of the problem too, a forest fire comes along -- poof goes the homestead. People too are to blame for screaming everytime tax money is devoted to actually doing good if a portion of that doesn't come to their state, county, city or their individual pockets.

My concern is that we are possibly in for another seven year drought (Or longer) as we had during the Great Depression. It seems to me that every measure to save precious water should be taken NOW. Maybe even coming up with a plan to cover over large reservoirs to prevent evaporation. Covered canals are in use now but not enough are so, I think. Population is growing and plans to handle the increase should be pursued.

But every state, county, city and individual should concentrate on saving water. In arid areas of the west, such as Denver, Colorado -- Yeah I know it is supposed to be the city of green lawns and many big trees and has been as long as I can remember, xeriscaping should be a must. I think apartments and other living quarters that have a common hot water supply should have a recirculating system which keeps hot water recirculating so that the only water needing to be run is from that system into the apartment, things like that have been in operation for years. Almost instantaneous hot water at ones finger tips -- paid for by extra bucks of rent, but water saving. How many gallons of extra water used on the unheated pipes depends on how far each tap is from the heater - necessitating running the water until hot water emerges.

Water is such a precious thing. Range wars have been fought in the west, very bitter ones too. I do think that the water wars of the west have been in court since somewhere in the 1800's. There is an idea of some that Colorado should build some sort of system to pipe the leftover from our share of the flow of the Colorado River which has been going down stream and sent back to the larger cities of our plains. The downstream people are screaming for more and more to support their growing population.

Maybe some day there will be dams and reservoirs on each watershed, seems to me that should already be so. But to be realistic, soon the increase in population will negate the progress made in that respect. As a free country we cannot make or enforce birth control laws, cannot by law limit the number of children folks can birth. Maybe people will learn to limit the number of children they have themselves. Hopefully they will. But as a father of five I suppose we should have been farsighted enough ourselves to limit our children to the boy and a girl that were our first two. Mea culpa, what more can I say ? There is no way to back up and go at it again. I don't think even Solomon could solve this one.

So after the firestorm of blame is over, we might just have only Ashes . . . . . . . . . . .

Blog