VigilanceVoice

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Wednesday--August 28, 2002—Ground Zero Plus 350

Flushing America's Most Vital Resource Down The Toilet

by
Cliff McKenzie
   Editor, New York City Combat Correspondent News

       GROUND ZERO, New York City, August 28--There's a Terrorist in every toilet.   Just take a look.   You probably can't see it.  It's invisible, but it's there.
       Each time the toilet flushes, you can hear the screams of the children's children's children.   Their Voices are parched.   They beg for a drop of water.   Blisters mar their lips.   Their fingertips are cracked from dehydration.   Their eyes are bloodshot.
       The source of the Terror--a flushing toilet.  
       That's a bizarre scenario of the future, but one that isn't too far out of reach of any Vigilant Parent who looks ahead to what his or children, or their children's children face in the not-so-distant future--Water Terrorism.

       And, it's happening now.   One small drop of Water Terrorism drips upon another, and another, slowly, insidiously, like the al-Qaeda, sneaking up on us in the shadows of our rush to live today at the expense of tomorrow.
        Unfortunately, a War On Toilet Flushing, or a Patriot Act Against Wasting Water, won't garner Washington many accolades, so it's doubtful we'll hear the Secretary of Defense shouting for all of us to treat our toilets with the same respect might a potential Terrorist stalking our children--but the effect ultimately is the same.   Our children are at risk.  Their children's children's are too.   So are all the children around the globe.
        Our wells are running dry.
        That allegedly "free" resource, water, of which we as human beings take so much for granted, isn't so free after all.   Like any resource, it has limits and water access is reaching a critical mass.
        The problem isn't per capita consumption or conservation efforts, it's population.   America is the most gluttonous global water consumer.   Currently, the per capita use of water is 1,500 gallons per day in the United States, down from 1,900 gallons per capita in 1980, reports the U.S. Geological Survey.   This represents a 20% reduction in usage.   (Go to bottom of page for ITT global chart on water per capita depreciation since 1955)

       But whatever water is being saved is being consumed by a growing population.  Each new person adds to the depletion of water.   One Texas farmer put it this way:  "We're all drinking from the same glass.  Maybe we're drinking a little less, but the more straws that are stuck in the glass, the faster the water disappears."
        One of America's most critical water sources is the Ogallala aquifer, an underground water trapping system serving Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.   Less than a half-century ago on one Texas farm the water was within 95 feet of the surface.  Today it stands at 335 feet, just 65 feet from the "bottom of the glass."
        With Texas' population projected to double by 2050, the drop in total water resources is slated to be reduced by 20 percent.

        The battle over water is between the farmers and the cities.   As cities expand, creating "more straws in the drinking glass," the precious resource necessary to grow food diminishes.   While U.S. farmers have the first claim over water, the cost of it is rising to make farming uneconomical.
        And the problem isn't just an American one.   In China, the most populated nation on earth with over 1.3 billion citizens, is diverting the Yangtze basin to feed the city of Beijing.   The cost is estimated to be $58 billion, nearly twice that of Three Gorges Dam, China's biggest current project.
       But dangers lurk in trying to manipulate Mother Nature.   In the Soviet era, central planners diverted water from the Aral Sea to feed its population growth.  Now, what was formerly one of the world's largest inland bodies of water has become a salty desert.
      As I discussed with my wife what I was planning on writing this morning about water crises, she reminded me of our younger daughter's crisis during the water shortage in California in the mid seventies.  Each afternoon after school she would meet her daughter as she raced up the hill to our house.  The seven-year-old and her mom sprinted home and my wife flung open the front door and she zoomed in to go to the bathroom.  Her frowns unfurled like a blossoming  flower as she beamed and ......relieved herself.  The rule in the schools in Southern California was " IF IT'S YELLOW - LET IT MELLOW - ONLY IF IT'S BROWN ARE YOU TO FLUSH IT DOWN".

      I had my own personal  experience with the precious nature of water years before in Vietnam.   It involved a toilet.
       During the war, I went to Saigon to spend a week away from the front lines.  I stayed in a former French villa in the heart of Cho-lon, the Chinese suburb of Saigon.   The villa had been converted to a series of rooms the owners rented out, and my buddy and I were fortunate to sleep in a loft overlooking the spacious tiled floors, enjoying a fan and mosquito net--two very elegant accessories.

       Unfortunately, there was one bathroom.   I noted that when I used it, there was no water in it, and no matter how I pulled on the chain to engage the gravity filled tank above, nothing happened.   
       The owners of the villa smiled at me as I entered and exited.  My Vietnamese wasn't very good, so I couldn't ask why there was no water.  As I started to climb the stairs back to my room, I noted a young boy rushing to the bathroom with a bucket. I paused and watched.   He took what was in the toilet out and dumped it into the street, returning with another bucket filled with water which he used to clean the toilet.
      It seemed odd to me that in a country so known for its wetness that a toilet would be dry, but that was the difference between the city and rural parts of the country.

        Also, in the late 70's when I was the senior vice president of Century 21 marketing, I constantly made bets with my associates that I could draw upon the greatest minds of the world for information.    I bet my associates I could get Buckminster Fuller to come to our company and talk with us on a personal level.   
      We were pioneers in the globalization of business franchise format systems.  No company prior to our success had been able to command such power, not even McDonald's.   We had grown from a zero base of franchise units in 1972 to over 7,500, and, had taken a command lead in market share, enjoying 11% of the $500 billion-a-year real estate sales market.

       Our strategies had come from futuristic thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller, and Alvin Toffler.  I found Mr. Fuller's address and location in Santa Barbara and wrote him a letter, describing how we had designed our incredible company on his "futuristic thinking," and invited him to come and visit us so we might talk about the future.
      He accepted.
      I shall never forget standing at the door of our Orange County, California national headquarters watching the great icon of futurism tottering toward me.   I soaked up the sight of such a great man visiting me, and opened the door to him as I might to a king or the Messiah.  He had created the geodesic dome, and countless thousands of other great innovations the world used--but it was his mind that I wanted to know, his thinking, and to study his eyes and hear his Voice.
      I gathered the staff from my office and sat Mr. Fuller in the Chairman of the Board's office so that Mr. Fuller might have the most regal of all places to espouse his wisdoms.    As I started to ask a raft of questions I had prepared, Mr. Fuller launched into his own expository, his eyes not focusing on anyone or anything particularly, but rather reaching out to all the ideas and thoughts he had ever had, compressing them in one rush of knowledge.
      He knew our business was real estate, living space for the world's families, so he concentrated his talk on that area.
      "You know why cities are all lumped together, house-upon-house, apartment-upon-apartment, store-next-to-store?"
       He didn't wait for me to answer, he just paused and continued.
       "Sewers," he said.  "Sewers dictate civilization."

       I leaned forward, a quick study that the man had an agenda and any question I might ask would only be curve ball he probably wouldn't swing at.
       "You lift up all the houses, all the stores, all the apartments in any town or city and you'll see tits," he said.  I flinched at the word "tits," wondering what was coming next.  He had everyone's undivided attention.
        "Tits..." he continued, "...sewer tits.   Pipes.   We are controlled by sewers.   It restrains us to live in close proximity.  People don't want to live close to one another, they are forced to by the sewers.   City planners build by the dictates of sewage.   You have to pump water to the houses, to the businesses through pipes, and then you have to remove the waste through pipes.   Under every city is bunch of pipes with tits that people plug into for water and toilets.

        If you didn't need water, you'd live anywhere. If you didn't need sewage, you'd live where ever you wanted.   It's the pipes that control civilization, a maze of pipes bringing water in, taking garbage out.  It forces us to live like cattle, all jammed together."
        I studied the old wise eyes of the man, his wrinkles, the crumpled suit he wore, the odd shaped shoes that looked like they were oversized for his feet, and the length of his trousers that dragged behind his heels. Assuredly, clothes do not make the man.

         "Mobile geodesic home modules, with the ability to generate their own water, with solar panels for heat, and a self-contained septic system--that's the future, he said.   Helicopters fly them anywhere, drop them in a placid spot next to a stream or trees.   You live in self-contained luxury, away from the madness of the city, away from the sewage tits that strangle mankind."
        It was then I realized his agenda.   He was promoting the "second home," a self-contained geodesic dome that people kept like they might a boat in a storage yard, and on weekends they had it lifted to a spot of their choice.
       "In the future, people will come to the city to work for a week, then go to their real homes, the geodesic dome habitat," he said.   "That's the future of real estate.   It will happen when we conquer the sewage.  When we learn to make our own water and heat and no longer rely on the pipes to dictate our social systems."
        There was much more he talked about, including how his right to patent the geodesic dome had been broken, and he hadn't received any economic benefit to his frustration.  
        When he left, I was exhausted.   I felt I had been thrust far into the future, far beyond my own reach to make any difference on the issue.
        But today, I'm not so sure.
        Mr. Fuller sat on the Future of the World committees around the world.   He saw the dripping of water long ago as a potential Terrorism to humanity.   His solution was learning to live another way--to make one's own water through distillation, to make one's own heat and power through solar panels, and to provide families with the ability to escape the madness of cities, where humanity collected only because the sewage systems demanded they be connected to the pipes that fed water, heat, electricity, and served to extricate the waste.

        "What family would want to live in a congested city when they could live in the harmony of nature in their self-contained geodesic dome," he stated.   "Who would want concrete over nature?"
        As I scanned the New York Times this morning, and its on-going reports on the sucking of our water resources, I thought of Mr. Fuller and his vision.   He wasn't a person to speak of the travails of human kind without offering it a solution.
        Terrorists see only the end of something, while the Vigilant see the extension of something evolving into another thing.
        I thought of Mr. Fuller as a Citizen of Vigilance.   He had the ability to see through the confusion and restraints to a solution--in his case, it was the ability of each human being to take command over the manufacture of his or her own water, energy and waste.   He saw the "tits of the sewer" as the Terrorism of Civilization, jamming us all into one room, bound by our thirst to drink, our hunger to be warm or cool, our need to flush a toilet.
         He saw helicopters hauling family geodesic domes to beatific spots, places where children and their parents could enjoy the joys of the family, communing with Nature on equal grounds, rather than taking from what we think is an endless well of resources.
        In reading about the environment, and the ongoing crush of humanity rushing to live in the comforts of the city, sucking up all the resources in one place that Mother Nature spread out evenly so that all might draw upon them, I saw that Mr. Fuller was a true Sentinel of Vigilance.   I recall his emphasis on the importance of a "family" being "together," avoiding the madness of modern society so that they might become more, not less human.

        Then I thought about a toilet.  I thought about flushing it as though the flow of the precious resource would never end.   How absurd, I thought, to think I can take and take and take without one day draining the well.
        Terrorists take, they do not give.   Complacency rules their thinking--"that's someone else's problem, not mine."    That thinking cleaves a Terrorist from responsibility and duty from his or her children, from all children, from the future.
        And Vigilant people give.  They have the Courage, Conviction and take the Right Actions that might cause them personal sacrifice in the present, but results in the benefit of the children, and their children's children.
        That's why I love the Pledge of Vigilance, I think.  It forces me out of the box, to think not in terms of my own selfish needs, my desires to quench my insatiable thirsts for the benefits of modern civilization--it's comforts, its immediate, gratifying pleasures.

       When I do, I think about the faucet dripping.  I think about the extra flushes of the toilet.  I think about the importance of taking one's family away from the madness of the city out into the womb of Nature, where a child might chase butterflies, might romp in the sweet grass of summer, might climb a tree without worrying about getting a ticket, might be fascinated about the ability to distill his or her own water, or be warmed by a solar panel rather than a radiator or an electric blanket.
        Then I thought of all the sewer tits I sit upon, hidden away from one's view, a maze of interlocking pipes twisting and turning their way beneath the concrete, forcing human beings to crush themselves into large masses, lost in the herd of humanity.
        I prefer Mr. Fuller's vision.   I like to remember his words, the gleam in his eyes when he spoke of families watching their domes being settled into a green, gentle field where families would learn they could live without the sewers of civilization.
        Yes, I thought, Mr. Fuller was a Sentinel of Vigilance, one the world could use now as it wrestles with flushing of so many toilets--a Voice more concerned about the children and their families than in diverting a river.
 

Poplulation Action International

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