Letter: Problem with GSL water-saving plan
It’s a great feeling to be self-sufficient. To make yourself more dependent seems a bit off, to me. But that’s what our “save the GSL” people are suggesting. They say we grow 94% of all the hay and alfalfa we need for our cattle/dairy farms. That means we already need to import 6%. They’d like us to reduce that to half of what we currently produce, while increasing our taxes (obviously) in order to pay farmers to NOT produce those crops. Let’s not forget that prices will also go up on our meat and dairy products. Who doesn’t want that?
When I look at our mountainside to the east, I see the “water line” of our old Lake Bonneville. It was that high several million years ago, long before we arrived and began putting more CO2 in the air. I like the lake, too, mind you. Seems like Nature has it’s own plan.
Where has our water gone? Well, this is a desert plateau. We don’t get much rain, here. Maybe not enough to support our burgeoning population. As that population grows, we use more resources, water being one of them. Why is it that we keep building more housing (high-density, mostly) and then wonder why we have less water? Don’t we need the water to grow the food to feed all the people we keep getting? Maybe we’ve reached the maximum population that the State can support? They say “if you build it, they will come”. Why do we keep building and then complain about our lack of infrastructure to support the increasing population? Are we actually trying to get to the “food scarcity/water scarcity” point?
We can’t control the rain, but we can control how we use the water. Cutting down on our food supply doesn’t seem like the thing to do. Neither does making ourselves more dependent on other State/countries seem very sensible. Maybe stop inviting more people to strain our resources would be a good start?
Roger Bordley
Roy