Thursday, February 24, 2000

Water crisis calls out for leadership, not half-measures
(ARN Editorial)

Abilene’s water shortage has become such a crisis that the city is moving ahead with plans for a pipeline to Lake Ivie, rightly, before even deciding how to pay for it. Last August, the City Council passed water conservation measures that kick in with increasing severity at various stages of dryness. Yet with the peak season of water use just around the corner, the council seems poised to let local residents flood their lawns in a final orgy of overindulgence.

Current Stage 1 restrictions permit watering with sprinklers once per week. Stage 2 bans sprinklers but allows hand-held hoses. Stage 3 prohibits all outdoor watering. At Mayor Grady Barr’s request, the Drought and Emergency Contingency Ordinance Citizens’ Review Committee has created an interim stage between the first two that would let residents water with sprinklers once every two weeks.

That proposal is an open invitation for Abilenians to use — waste — as much water as possible and move us directly to the trigger point of Stage 3.

Sure, most of us are attached to our carefully manicured lawns and have invested considerable money and time in them. Many, in fact, consider well-cared-for lawns a quality of life issue. But having enough water to drink and enough water to operate businesses — which, in turn, guarantee jobs — is the real quality of life issue here.

Officeholders have one responsibility that rises above catering to the wishes of their friends and constituents. It’s called leadership. And if the City Council approves this lame proposal, it will be a failure of leadership.

We face tough choices, unpleasant alternatives. In a perfect world, Abilenians could save their lawns without putting our really essential uses of water at risk. In the real world, we have no control over how much worse our water shortage is going to get. It’s time we face the hard fact that our lawns are a luxury, not a necessity, and let them go, at least until a long-term solution is found.

Genuine leadership in city government would take us there rather than use ineffectual half-measures that encourage us to persist in our follies.