Water wisely twice a day

Every year, April 1 rolls around, and we here at the world headquarters of the Weekly World News & Review find ourselves striving to say something that’s both profound and necessary in our editorial. This year, we’ve discovered, after in-depth investigation—which included but did not extend beyond polling the members of the editorial staff—that there is a problem with the water in the Truckee Meadows. Rather than using the natural resource to beautify our living environment by filling the river, watering lawns and flinging it high in the air for delightful water features and fountains, selfish and shortsighted folks are installing zeroscaping and low-flow toilets, and “conserving” for some unforeseeable future. Liberal government programs like the Truckee Meadows Water Authority go as far as to request a 10 percent reduction in consumption. This is absurd.

Let’s get one thing straight, people. Water is a use-it-or-lose-it resource. If we here in Northern Nevada throw it away on cacti, “conservation” and 2-liters-a-day human consumption, it will be unavailable to be used in ways that benefit the community, like the building of new subdivisions for Tesla employees, oil fracking in Eastern Nevada, or even for export to the Nestle bottling plants in California.

How can we continue to move forward to our dreams of an economic paradise based on bootstrap entrepreneurs when we don’t create the sort of circumstances that ensure that only the strongest and most economically advantaged survive? It’s very similar to the education debate that crops up every two years with a new Nevada Legislature: We need a fractured playing field, otherwise there is no ensuring that the right people win in the end. In other words, if we don’t make it difficult for people with fewer economic and educational benefits, why would they ever leave, thus increasing the percentage of wealthy people in our state?

So, in the interest of providing the most water resource to the people most willing to pay for it, we’ve got some suggestions.

More industry, particularly manufacturing. It’s plain that Tesla will be innovating with creative uses of water. With the company’s new plan for taking the driving out of the hands of humans, there may even be a way to further diminish human use in order to enhance industrial potential.

More homes in the south and north. Obviously, the farther from the source—the Truckee River—that the development occurs, the more infrastructure will be required, and not only that, but distance means decreased efficiency! It seems like it’s been awhile since we heard from the Winnemucca Ranch (also called Sprawl Ranch and Spring Mountain) people. That land is about as desolate as it gets. Families there will require huge water investments just to get their lawns established.

It’s about protecting families, people. Can we get together on this?