A great summary of the uproar over the new water plan
(via Fresh Loaf) An editorial in Sunday’s Macon Telegraph gives a great summary of the problems facing the new water plan.
From the article:
The Ledger Enquirer said, “organizing the allocation of increasingly scarce water resources along lines that never had anything to do with water makes about as much sense as picking the musicians in an orchestra on the basis of height. The fact that this approach to water management was injected into a two-year-old discussion less than a week before the last round of public forums has a fine-print, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” feel to it, especially for downstreamers.”
As an added bonus, we get a brief mention in the fourth paragraph. Nice!
December 18th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
How awesome is that? Free press.
They didn’t mention my predictions. Darn them to heck!
The latest is that after the three governors met, they agreed to come to terms on March 15th. That’s quite a ways away. I was hoping for something sooner.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:06 am
rkolter > the 3 GOPer Governors could care less about the drought. As long as themselves, their power plant pals, and wealthy chums get water, then everyone else can go to Hell.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:10 am
The drought situation in Georgia is bad enough, but the politics makes it worse.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:08 am
“Still, the state government didn’t mobilize behind something as simple as building reservoirs. The present administration actually took a planned and funded reservoir off the table calling it a boondoggle for former Speaker of the House Tom Murphy. The reservoir was to be located in his district, but now those words are bitter with nothing to abate the taste of a missed opportunity to have avoided the present crisis.”
It’s a little bit comforting to see I’m not the only one who feels this way. Calling any project you don’t like a pork-barrel spending project in order to kill it is an old trick. The current federal administration has used this quite a bit since the Democrats gained control of congress. It seems like in every debate in this country, the winners are the ones who are the best at screwing their political opponents and changing the nature of the debate to something misleading rather than the ones who show the most responsible governance.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Pretty cynical post Andrew. I actually like cynicism when directed at government - so I applaud that. I’m wondering if your cynicism also extends to the fact that the proposed lake would border several hundreds of acres owned by Georgia House Speaker Murphy and his family.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940414/posts
I’m sure that was just a coincidence - totally innocent right? No need for cynicism there. Those are Democrats and they are good guys.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:20 am
RichS, are you saying it was proper to starve the state of Georgia of water in order to stick it to the Democrats? I don’t doubt what you say it true, and sure maybe a location with less conflicts of interest could have been chosen but the fact is, there was a reservoir planned and it was canceled by Perdue.
December 20th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Not at all Andrew. I wish they had built the thing even if everybody in the state house got rich from it. Honestly it looks like what happened is that it was a good idea which wasn’t going to get done unless somebody powerful got his pockets lined. That somebody was the late Speaker Murphy.
When Sonny took over, we were at the bottom of a recession and Georgia was hit hard. He had to cut to balance the budget. This was one of the things that got cut. In hindsight I’m sure he wishes he hadn’t. Maybe if it was a powerful republican getting his pockets lined it might not have been axed. Who knows - I’ve been done taking up for Sonny for a while now. I just like to see a little balance in the blame game.