Saturday, March 04, 2006

Conduit

Thoughts on the interesting necessity of providing a conduit for good water to get to the lower Arkansas.

According to the Pueblo Chieftain the Salazar boys are suddenly demanding action on the proposed conduit.

And I’m reminded that politics is a lot like a good game of chess….

In chess, for those who play it, one get’s their pieces into place on the playing board and then, the ‘logic’ of the end-game is inevitable.

Look on where you live as if it were a playing board for a vast game of ‘chess’. All the things that people, organizations and/or goverments make are merely playing pieces on the board. Doesn’t matter if they are conduits or interstate interchanges or principle arterials or bridges. Each serves its purpose in the moves towards ‘end-game’, wherein a specific major task is achieved or accomplished. The major task could be anything that some government or other agency set their mind to accomplish. Some such things are rather complex. There could be a lot of opposition to the basic achievement. In such a situation, it could be necessary to develop an environment where it would seem to people to be in their best interest to do something; something that if the environment had not been ‘modified’, they would never agree to in the first place.

Let’s look at the proposed conduit and see it as another playing piece in a larger ‘game’, if you will. That game being the proposed Colorado Springs Southern Delivery System (SDS). The pipeline system from the Arkansas River basin, that would bring bountious mountain water to Colorado Springs to support it’s plans for future growth. And, if state laws are not changed, allowing that city to dump dirty sewage water into Fountain creek to contaminate the Arkansas River to points east of their confluence.

As long as there is sewage waste floating down the Arkansas river from Colorado Springs, people are not going to be happy with an increase in waste via the SDS.

Consider that in order to get final approval on the SDS it would be good that the people who rely on the Arkansas river for their drinking water should be placated with respect having a good source of drinking water. If the Arkansas is continually subjected to offensive sewage spills from Colorado Springs, via the Fountain, obviously they need to have a good source of water other than the Arkansas river right outside their door. Therefore, a by-pass of the natural order of things needs to be built. Something like a conduit that brings good water to them from above the confluence with the Fountain.

Last Summer we saw what seems to be a dramatic increase in the number of incidents of untreated sewage waste getting into the Fountain from Colorado Springs. So many incidents that the Sierra Club and THEN our own newly elected DA decided it was time to take legal action.

Then, starting last December, and coming up to a near crescendo in February, we hear the drum-beat from our Congressional delegation in Washington on how important it is to build this conduit. The Salazar boys and even Senator Allard are on-board with getting this decades-old dream to be brought to reality.

Coincidences. Coincidences. Coincidences….

....as any military intell puke will tell you, “I believe in coincidence. I just don’t trust it.” The more dramatic will insist that there are no such things as ‘coincidence’. And they’ll tell that to you emphatically.

Too many coincidences with respect to this particular game, if you ask me. Government, like corporate enterprise, is all too often about machination; scheming to get something they consider desirable. In this case the SDS.

The sudden onset of sewage problems in Colorado Springs. The sudden interest in completing a study begun over 40 years ago. The push by Colorado Springs to get the SDS established. They all relate to each other. I almost begin to believe that I’m seeing that Jack Nicholson movie, Chinatown, being played out along the Front Range.

I’ll have more on what I think REALLY should be done about this whole affair tomorrow.

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