Water Managers

I have to admit, I am really a bit pathetic. In order to crank my rusty wheels in my brain in motion to post on my blog, I need to have an assist from Kathryn on what to write about. Usually I tap into something that begins to form, but my brain doesn't connect the dots until Kathryn interrupts me in mid-rant and says, "Sounds like a good blog post subject." At which point, my brain says something to effect, "Huh? Chicken and rice?" Ok, so that has nothing to do with it, but I digress.

To my point, and the point of my blog for tonight - Water managers. I recently read an article in the paper in regards to the water content we currently have in our snow pack. And quoted is the somewhat whimsical beast, the water manager.

Who knows what dire circumstances that brought someone to the point that they had to make a career of watching water. Granted, there is probably no substance on the face of the earth, save maybe oxygen, at sustaining life than water. And while we usually walk to the sink and turn on the water, fully expecting clean, wholesome water to flow out of the tap and into our cups, we rarely have to consider that there is a whole infrastructure in place to manage that water and make sure it's what we expect.

I don't know what bet you have to lose, or who you had to get really mad, to make you resort to being the water manager for a place like Utah. Utah is a desert, so the water here is pretty important. But what is there to say about it? It snows, the snow melts, it comes down from the mountains in rivers (or "cricks" as the good ole' native Utahns would call them), we collect it, then feed it down the pipes to our cups. What more could there be?

Well, I recall in my youth the danger in not listening to these feral water manager beasts. Way back in the day, 1983, to be exact, we had ourselves a weird water year. There was the usual pattern - snow, snow melt, rivers, etc. But this year, it decided to do it all strange-like. We had snow. We had a LOT of snow. I don't remember a year before, or since, that we had snow like we did that year. Roofs were collapsing in Kaysville, carports in Clearfield were caving in, little doggie mansions in Bountiful were bowing under the sheer weight of the snow. I recall going around as a noble varsity scout and climbing up on the roof of the widows' houses in the ward to shovel snow off them (the roofs, not the widows) to prevent them from caving in (the roofs, not the widows). Most of the rest of my youth, that would have got me in trouble, but we were doing service!

Then spring came along, but it was cold, and wet. In fact, it stayed winter-like all the way until Memorial day weekend. Then it got HOT. Like 90 degrees hot. And snow doesn't like hot much. It stops being snow and starts being water. But there wasn't anywhere for the water to go fast enough, so it started crossing streets. And it didn't even look both ways - it just went!

And in Farmington, they had themselves a good old fashioned mud-slide. I remember this vividly because the mud covered almost the entire course of my paper route. And they didn't let me ride my bike up there to deliver papers because, well, it was muddy. In fact, there were two or three porches that were then located a considerable distance from where they had been previously and no one involved with that porch seemed to care anymore that there wasn't a paper on it.

As all disasters go, mostly we survived. But it got me thinking about water up in them thar hills. The newspaper got that idea too, and ever since, the water manager has become something of a celebrity. You started to hear from some of these guys that never got any notice before, and people cared what they had to say! We didn't want a repeat of that nasty winter of '83.

So here we are, safely nestled in 2010. I recently picked up a the paper and read a story on our water situation. Basically, it sucks.

According to our water managers, we had snow. But it wasn't enough snow. And even if we got way more snow, we won't have enough snow. In fact, if it snowed constantly from now until the end of May, we are all screwed.

What will happen? Well, we won't have enough snow. And, if we don't have enough snow, then.....we won't have enough snow.

It seems almost as if these water manager people are saying that it's all our fault. You see the problem was we had a warm November. It didn't snow. And we all enjoyed it! If you had been smart, you would have been totally disgusted that we didn't get enough snow and then we might have been ok, but you were all out working in your yards, ENJOYING the no-snow condition! Now it has come home to roost. Because we didn't get enough snow then, we are in trouble!

But wait, you say. How can me enjoying the warm weather have anything to do with it? Even if I hated the warm weather, it still would not have made it snow, right? I mean, we can't make it snow! All we can do is enjoy the lack of it. But that's the problem, they say. You ENJOYED it. So the snow gods didn't let it snow because they were just trying to make YOU happy! And because you were happy, we didn't get snow! So now we are screwed and it's all YOUR FAULT!!!!!

You see, if we had a good snow storm in November, it would have made it easier to get our normal snow pack by April. But you had to enjoy that warm November, didn't you. Now even though we had almost a foot of new snow in the last week, preceded by even more snow in December (I think it has snowed straight since the 2nd week in December, hasn't it?) It just is not enough. Even if it snowed 2 feet every day until April 30th, we won't have enough snow!

So, what kind of person becomes a water manager?

Eeyore.