Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Georgia is near a crisis over water.
Part of the reason: the Endangered Species Act.
With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.
Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.
Obviously, a lack of rain is the larger problem, and without rain, re-arranging the deck chairs will be irrelevant.
But some aspects of the ESA deserve critical examination--or outright repeal.
HT: John Lott
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3 comments:
C'mon, Dad! You know that humans are the greatest evil on the planet! That's why people are more outraged over cruelty to dogs and cats and mussels than they are to thirsty people and abortion. Exempt the mussels from the ESA? Never! Let the humans thirst!
"Lawd, just look at how brown mah lawn is."
I doubt that people are going thirsty. They may have to resort to Eastern European standards of personal hygiene. So what? Deoderant and aftershave aren't so expensive. Cheaper than rescue programs for endangered species.
Droughts aren't fun, and droughts happen everywhere at some time or another. So why screw up the environment in an area because more people live in the watershed than the watershed can support in dry times?
It's actually due to a lack of market pricing for water. Water is more expensive in Milwaukee than in Phoenix.
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