Lessons of Deserts and of Droughts - Estimating High Water Use

I was born on the plains, yet raised in the desert. The lesson of the plains that I most remember is the one that forced my father and all of my uncles and aunts off of my grandfather and grandmother's farm in Oklahoma. It is the lesson of the drought. Although my grandfather and grandmother were one of the few families which kept their farms; they lost their family, as their children scattered into several other states. (Thanks to Jerry Dalrymple of Wichita, Kansas for providing this portion of a much larger picture of William & Mary Dalrymple's homestead. The picture is dated on the back: Dec. 25 1925 (29?))

The lesson of the desert town in which I was raised is something different. Fresno, California has rights to much of the snowfall watershed of the Sierra Mountains. Because of this the San Joaquin Valley is one of the richest agricultural areas on this earth. Also because of this, you find lush lawns and other obvious water wasters, in an area that is essentially desert.

This lush lifestyle in this semi-arid location has had a limiting effect on the intellect. Most of the time people do not conserve water. And when there has been a pressing need, the people were not prepared for it and continued to waste water. I have seen water running down streets of Fresno in the middle of water crises and I have talked to homeowners about it. They did not know of the crisis; nor did they care.

This "lush desert" mentality also had an effect on the government in the region. First you waster water; then you waste other things. Eventually you waster the most important relationships of your life.

For example, the state has ignored the option of putting the tenth University of California campus in the declining downtown of the southern San Joaquin Valley's largest city, the only place that made any sense, environmentally and economically. When state governments - especially when state universities - act as if they lack common sense, the local governments can be expected to act less rationally.

It's affected their libraries. They move their library branches out of older areas of town in order to encourage people to think other areas of town are more "with it." The former librarian yielded to public pressure in the sixties or seventies to remove the Tower District branch. The current County librarian "cooked the books" by adjusting hours and circulation reports to justify moving the old Fig Garden library branch to Fig Garden extension.

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