When Crusader AXE joins the Norwegian Blue, pining for the Fjords and such, it will probably be from someone not paying attention. It may be prosaic, not bothering with a bathmat and falling headfirst into the commode; it may be silly, like some teen driver wetdaydreaming on the interstate at 80 in his Prius and clipping me as I drive by muttering that the kid needs to get off my grass; it may be tragic, somebody in Starbucks not noticing the ground glass in the frappuchino mix. Regardless, some more attention and I'd probably be around longer until some other inattention kills me.
Civilizations tend to go the same way. While there's a revisionist school of thought to the effect that we shouldn't talk about the decline of the Roman Empire and the dark ages, I saw something not too long ago that pointed out that most cities in Europe had running water and indoor plumbing in the third century AD, something that had pretty well vanished by 500AD and was missing again until the 1900s. Even though the Roman sewer system continued to function in a lot of ways, hooking it up just seemed too complicated.
The reason for mentioning this is simple; we've found a similar way to perhaps literally let everything catch fire and all die -- we've ignored the water system for 100 years and now we're shocked, shocked that the fucking thing is falling apart. How could a system of pipes, conduits, basically holes in the ground, pipes, pumps, etc. fail? Goddamn it, people, heads need to roll. It worked in 1950, why doesn't it work now?
Well, it doesn't work now because we ignored it. We weren't really paying attention, and the maintenance system has consisted of fixing what broke. We're pretty good at handling planned obsolescence and wear and tear in our own lives. I know that the desktop I'm doing this on will probably be obsolete in a couple of years; I know that my shiny new Mustang GT will be kind of clunky in 4 or 5 years. In general, I buy good stuff, try to take care of it -- if I remember to pay attention -- and replace it as I need to. Not a bad way to function as a civilization.
But, tragedy of the commons...water and sewers are cheap and Goddamnittohell, they need to be cheaper. Except that nothing is cheaper. And, here's a thought -- we're dealing with technology not that much more advanced than the Romans in our water systems, installed a hundred years ago, and not significantly upgraded, maintained or even systematically monitored. When a pipe breaks, it either gets noticed or it doesn't. If it doesn't, the road eventually caves in; otherwise, it gets fixed when people complain about lack of water pressure. Or the street floods...
Which makes the current situation in most major cities sort of, well, inevitable...
As city employees searched for underground valves, a growing crowd
started asking angry questions. Pipes were breaking across town, and
fire hydrants weren’t working, they complained. Why couldn’t the city
deliver water, one man yelled at Mr. Hawkins. (AXE comment: Can't you hear it now? Where's Glenn Beck when you need him?)
Such questions are becoming common across the nation as water and sewer systems break down. Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes(!!!!)somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.
In Washington alone there is a pipe break every day, on average, and this weekend’s intense rains overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
One of the issues Crusader AXE has with this situation is the sheer goddamn lack of necessity to the whole thing. Granted, Washington DC has always been the city of Northern Charm and Sudden Efficiency, as JFK put it in 1960. Still, given the number of Federal Agencies charged with things like public health and environmental protection and housing and urban development, you'd think someone might have noticed that the city they've got in kind of a semi-colonial status was falling apart?
If you'll recall all the nonsense about the stimulus package, I keep wondering where the hell the "shovel ready" projects are. Seriously, I had expected to see the President and everybody else down to the DOD third assistant undersecretary for dog catching running around breaking ground and actually doing something with shovels. Water system projects seem like the kind of things that municipalities, states, counties, the Federal Government should have ready to go. Yet, damn all is being done. Look at the economic stimulus...you gotta dig holes, move dirt and debris, lay pipe, fit the pipe, weld, seal, flush, move connect, fill in the holes, pave the roads, re-route the traffic, lay feeder roads, build switching stations. You're looking at 100 years of family wage jobs. Infrastructure...not sexy, but when the faucets produce brown mud followed by air and nothin', people are going to be pissed that we wasted this opportunity on too-big-to-fail banks while our too-critical to fail infrastructure crumbled...and, everything caught fire and, because of no water pressure, those of us not dying of cholera, dysentery and e coli all died from fire. And water. And not paying attention...but, while it's easy to blame the politicians, and the commentators, and the "guv'ment bureaucrats" the people who haven't been paying attention are the people. We get the government we deserve and We've got a doozy...eight years of incompetence and not caring, followed by caring incompetence.
Here's the deal -- no water system, no cities. There is no "we can't afford this!" Seriously, the power grid, the water and sewer systems, the communications network, the roads, rail and air systems are not negotiable in a real civilization. In much the same way, the school systems and health care systems are not negotiable. It's going to be less expensive than the alternative...which is sitting around in caves, eating raw meat and having sex with woodland creatures.
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