Warned and Warned and Warned.

Californians, along with much of the world, have been warned about the uncertainty and critical importance of water supply. They have had close calls, dire straits, water fights, and warning lists as long as your arm, but they persist in poor planning. Along with practical action to avoid disaster, how shall we institute accountability for those who risk millions ignoring environmental and scientific facts?

Yet another editorial warning for those in civic office to ignore:

A drought of this severity naturally calls into question the definition of "normal." It appears, in fact, that what is normal is an oscillation in climate, from wet periods, like 1976 to 1998, to dry periods, which have recurred with some regularity. So far, this is a five-year drought. But no one knows how long it will last. The climatic history of Arizona, for instance, has been reconstructed by painstaking analysis of tree rings. That research shows that there have been two droughts that lasted 18 years and one, near the end of the 16th century, that lasted 28 years. Tree-ring evidence also shows that for parts of Arizona, 2002 was the driest year in the past 1,400 years.

This drought still isn't as dire as the one from 1900 to 1904. But everything in the West has changed since 1904. In fact, everything has changed since 1976, when two wet decades led to an almost unimaginable explosion of development and population across the region, an explosion that, in some places, is rapidly drawing down underground aquifers. In the short run, that pace of growth is unsustainable. In the long run, the question is whether the West can sustain even the growth it has managed so far.

from, The Arid West
Published: May 10, 2004, New York Times online.

Furthermore, this is yet another symptom of the sickness of willful ignorance on the part of a gargantuan population, ever growing, and ever less willing to be accountable for understanding. The problem with public service, as with public education, is the Public, and any effective leader will have to make that point and make it stick to make lasting policy change. Like any child, the Public wants a leader who'll set limits and have high standards for them. The permissive and capricious panderer to bases and blocks for coalitions of support to gain "winnability" degrades the already torpid body of the Public.