Today's bad news
Atkins Reservoir this morning now two-thirds depleted
Conservation is good, and we're doing a good job with it. BUT WE NEED RAIN.
Desperate times call for desperate measures: Friday is a full-moon with zero chance of rain. Let's have a giant rain dance on the Town Common.
Maybe we can get the Native Americans who are fired up about the solar farm in Shutesbury to come perform.
And we can get the UMass cheerleading squad for extra motivation and the Power and Class of New England UMass Marching Band to play a few sad Irish songs to move Mother Nature to tears, along with a few kegs of beer for (de)hydration.
Game on!
This, Larry, is one of the best ideas for a community event that has ever been suggested here!
ReplyDeleteI will search for a tie-dyed t-shirt . . . . I am sure I have one somewhere.
The mid-west farmers use cloud seeding techniques and other weather modification. Why don't we use them?
ReplyDeleteWhen we stopped burning coal the sullen perfume of sulfur dioxide aerosols stopped seeding the clouds - go figure !!!
ReplyDeleteMore bad news -- school relatrd and independent of Geryk"
ReplyDeletehttp://thefederalist.com/2016/09/15/can-expect-see-violence-schools-year/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=dbc7e79557-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-dbc7e79557-72476953
Larry, the word "sabotage" comes from the word "sabot", a whole-foot wooden shoe once popular in France & surrounding countries.
ReplyDeleteIn the early days of the Industrial Revolution, it seems that these shoes would fall off people's feet and somehow wind up in the gears of factory machinery. Plausibly deniable as "accidental" or "horseplay", sabotage is a highly effective asymmetric tactic that was successfully employed by labor unions a century ago.
The Umass students essentially have the town "by the b***s" right now as all it'd take would be a couple thousand people doing something as simple as leaving a sink on or repeatedly flushing a toilet to turn this into an actual emergency.
It's asymmetric, there is no way the town could hold specific individuals accountable, and any effort to hold the group accountable would only encourage a whole lot more of it.
#smile.......
No need to panic at this point, as we are getting water from wells, so the short term rainfall is no longer a day-to-day factor. Atkins will fill up over the winter. That doesn't mean we don't need to conserve water, just that the local weather forecast is not a factor right now.
ReplyDeleteApparently Ed, I have more faith in UMass students than you do.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Ed, but UMass students don't hate Amherst. Just look at the ones that had a great time last night at the Block Party. Of course, if you lived anywhere even remotely near here, you would know that.
ReplyDeleteEd, the Town of Amherst didn't do anything to you. You have no reason to wish them ill. You have a dispute with a very small number of people at UMass. Try to remember that.
ReplyDeleteIf UMASS is so worried about "doing their part," why were they irrigating the field North of the Stadium at 7 this morning??
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate irony, Larry Kelly defending the UMass students.
ReplyDeleteAnd as I said last year, things like the streetfair are a good thing.
You may be right, although my point was/is that if the town did anything to piss them off, then things could get interesting.
That lawsuit is going to make the APD look really bad -- as it should if what is alleged actually happened,, and the water shortage is going to last until at least spring -- even if Tropical Storm Julia were to reform & refill the Atkins, even if you could then immediately use it (which I doubt), you are still relying on wells for a good chunk of your daily need.
It's going to take months, if not years, to recharge those aquifers. Rain isn't immediately going to help them, even though the water would be soaking down, it will take months to get there.
Maybe you're right. Maybe the town won't piss them off. Who knows?
Ed, the Town of Amherst didn't do anything to you. You have no reason to wish them ill. You have a dispute with a very small number of people at UMass. Try to remember that.
ReplyDeleteIt's the question the Nuremburg Trials never answered, and which was never even asked about Dresden -- to what extent are folks "just doing their jobs" responsible -- say the guy shoveling coal into the steam locomotive hauling a trainload of Jews to Dachau?
Or the infamous rape at "Big Dan's Tavern" back in the 1980's. What was the moral culpability of the bystanders who stood there watching a woman being raped on the pool table and did nothing to stop it?
I don't see why I shouldn't wish them ill....
Ed definitely falls into the "bystander with moral culpability" category.
ReplyDeleteEd, you're delusional. You're not the victim of anything. Get a grip and move on with your life.
ReplyDeleteLet's get some native americans to do a rain dance?? In the words of John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious!!" Have some blacks eat watermelon too. And let's not forget to have us womenfolk bake cookies.
ReplyDeleteEd, townspeople in Amherst don't know who you are. Local officials don't know who you are. They didn't stand and watch anything. All this is part of your delusional thinking.
ReplyDeleteMethinks they doth protest too much.
ReplyDeleteIf he's delusional, why do you care what he thinks?
Why would either "townspeople" or "local officials" even care who he is?
Somehow, methinks they do protest too much....
I like the students leaving faucets going idea. It shows those in "power" how powerless they are if people do not comply.
ReplyDeletePrivate wells are still doing fine....