By Cindy Beckett

The below is a link to a bona fide report, and I’m sure even if they won’t admit it, both councils and executives have heard me warn of this over and over again, year after year.  No one would listen, no one would believe me.  Now, here we are, and it does not make me feel happy or justified to be right and see it become reality. 

I did my best to get anyone to listen about this for the last 20+ years to no avail – if you don’t pay attention and stop destroying the very last of our water resources solely for development, we WILL run out of water here.  And now it has come to fruition.  I am not proud or happy that I was right, but very sad that no one would listen.

The old war time song “enjoy yourself – it’s later that you think” comes to mind! 

Funny (not!) that this report exactly matches what I have been trying to get anyone in the Pierce Co govt to listen to for how many years now….you cannot continue to break the water laws that demand protection of the water resources, or allow/abet those laws to be broken, solely to accommodate highest possible density on every acre of land no matter what is lost, while this county has ZERO enforcement capability to protect our irreplaceable water resources.  We will run out of water here.  Did anyone listen?  Of course not.  I warned if you don’t stop stripping the region of its forest, and taking down every single tree on every single development site, you will lose the rain cycle.  Did anyone listen?  Of course not.  Evapotranspiration is a critically necessary occurrence, trees give off moisture, that moisture feeds into the clouds, when they get full enough, they drop the water back to the earth.

We are no longer capable of having that happen as all the trees are gone – not just in what’s left of our forests, but on every acre of land in the county UGA, especially on all development sites.  Even though the people wrote their plans to include that a certain number of mature trees has to remain on the sites, developer executives instructed their planning depts that it was OK for all trees to be removed from every site to accommodate the developer/builder.  Despite objections from the apparently invisible populace, that practice was and still is allowed by the county council since they failed to ever do anything about it.  Every tree on every site removed across the entire area.  Result? No more rain, no more recharge, no more flowing creeks and streams, failed aquifers, no clean air and no way to produce food crops.

So here we are now  – truly running out of water.  And not just here – read the verified report below.  I wish I could say I was sorry, but if you were ignored and dismissed for years and years as I was, you wouldn’t be sorry now either.  As I always say….”you ordered it, sunshine!”

Several States have already run out or are near running out of water altogether as they allowed massive farms to drain their aquifers.  Some have stopped all new development.  Not so WA!

Here, the county willingly allows an out of control planning dept to approve all development – even on top of the now failing sole source aquifer that used to provide water to the entire UGA.  Did the county council ever do anything about that?  No!  Did anyone ever really listen?  No!

And so, while still believing what the developers want you to believe, that it is some kind of law that we MUST build at the highest density possible on every acre of land no matter what  resources, especially water, are destroyed and forever lost, nothing was ever done to protect the water.

Brings me right back to when I started trying to get those with deaf ears to listen over 20 years ago, asking where will you be and what will you do when you turn on the tap and NOTHING comes out?  

It’s coming, believe me!

Here is the link to the CNN story.

The system that moves water around the Earth is off balance for the first time in human history