If, in 1869, Durham’s leaders had been of the ilk of our present crop of elected officials, we’d have about 1,000 people living here.
Faced with trying to provide water to a growing population, our forefathers didn’t say, “Well, we have to stop growing now. The Eno River just hasn’t got enough water support any more people.” What they did over the decades, when growth required more water, was find ways to provide it. They dug reservoirs. They built dams.
Instead of trying to solve the problem, our modern leaders resort to taxes, fees and threats to refuse hookups. Pushing this approach are Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker and Durham City Councilman Eugene Brown. Neither has floated the notion of trying to increase our reservoir capacity.
Instead, they want to raise rates to discourage use (this is a rare nod to market forces by local leaders), meanwhile pushing citizens to buy rain barrels. Not one syllable by local leaders during this drought episode has been uttered about increasing capacity, engineering some solution that will provide more water for future growth. That used to be the standard approach to a problem in this country. Now we see problems as unsolvable.
This is no doubt connected to the messages I see on my community listserv from people who can’t fix a leaky faucet or a clogged drain. Nobody can do anything anymore. That’s why public officials, instead of rolling up their sleeves to actually solve a problem, meekly back away and resort to scolding citizens about overuse of resources.
If our forebears had approached problems in this way we’d have no transcontinental railway, no Hoover Dam, and no highways, which, come to think of it, is the way many anti-growthers holding public office wish it had turned out.
