Black Gold

--Water, Pavel Constantin (Romania)

Down by the banks of the River Charles
That's where you'll find me
Along with lovers, muggers, and thieves.
I love that dirty water
--Dirty Water, The Standells

Up from the ground came a bubbling crude.
Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
--Beverly Hillbillies theme song
________________

Dirty water and Willie Horton ushered George H.W. into the Bush White House, and in a sense set the tone for the world to come.

Bush 41, the child of Ronald Reagan, viewed terrorism as warfare, and this legacy still affects our daily lives. George W. Bush took those ideas and turned terrorism and warfare on its head. All with the help of dirty water and a touch of racism.

Today we are flipping out over perceived terror threats when real threats to our health and safety are not being addressed by any level of government.

The dirty water is back, both in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the tap water of Boston ("'Boil-Water' Issued for Nearly 2 Million in Mass.") Millions of Bostonians were left without water last week when the system failed. It is but a few days in such a situation to disease and pestilence. What happens when the water and sewer systems of the older, tax-starved, rust-belt (former) metropolises -- Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit -- crash?

According to the Boston Globe [a paper that almost went bankrupt last year], "A major pipe bringing water to the Boston area sprung a 'catastrophic' leak dumping eight million gallons of water per hour into the Charles River." Connections in a series of Rube Goldberg connecting pipes which had patched the "riddled with leaks" 1940's Hultman aqueduct failed. Speaking on the pipe failure, Governor Deval Patrick said, "We have so much neglected infrastructure."

The BP oil spill and the Boston water failure show threats come in many packages, and we ignore the less sexy ones at our peril. Terrorism is a threat, yet it pales to insignificance when compared to Hurricanes Andrew or Katrina, massive oil spills and the crumbling utility infrastructures of our cities.

The Environmental Protection Agency's website cites water profligacy and an "infrastructure gap" for both wastewater and drinking water over the next 20 years, and addressing the repairs could top $200 billion (at today's costs.)

When the inevitable happens, what level of government will possess the funds and ability to address the calamity? Should cities like Detroit even be saved, and is the cost worthwhile? The same formula should have been applied to the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) before we deployed one set of boots to occupy foreign ground. Our own ground has rotten, past-expiration date utilities under the surface -- that should take priority in our national interest.

Our government is reactive versus proactive in all actual threat areas. It fails to reform decrepit financial instruments; it fails to protect us from avoidable oil spills off our shores, and fails to protect us from predictably failing utilities. All of these situations pose a significantly greater threat to our well-being than a shoe- or underwear bomber manque.

Bacteria in our water is more dangerous than the terrorists that we are told want to kill us. There is bacteria in my water but there sure aren't any terrorists camped out in the alleys.

Willie Horton is gone, but the dirty water remains.

--Jim and Lisa