Water is undoubtedly our society’s most valuable resource

EDITOR:

The Oct. 13, news item on Lethbridge Herald's page A8 “Milk River has water rationing plans in place” should have been on the front page – water is the lest talked about and most important resource on this planet. (editor's note, it was the Prairie Post Sept. 14’s front page).

Officials of this parched desert town chirp about the cleverness of diverting wetland water to service a dumb water-sucking golf course and in the next breath threaten to cut water service or impose stiff fines if folks fail to comply with a “Water Conservation Bylaw”!

Watering ornamental vegetation, flushing toilets, fighting fires, etc. with treated water when reserves are overtly stressed, or even when they’re not, is loutish in 2018 to say the least! Water is unquestionably the least understood, least appreciated, and arguably most abused fundamental constituent on the planet – ask anyone who was in Cape Town South Africa summer 2018.

Further importance of water may be demonstrated this way: two people meet in the desert, one dying of water depravation has nothing but the clothes on the back and a million dollars in a bag. The other has no more than a few coins in a pocket but adequate water to share. Penniless decides to barter the water for the bag containing the million dollars.

Now let’s discuss wealth transfer! Has the real value of a small quantity of water been established? There will come a time when humans can no longer impose fines, cut supply or invent ways out of their everexpanding water dilemmas.

Maybe a time looms near where at our peril we ignore the idiocy of flushing toilets, watering home lawns and golf courses, wash vehicles and implements with water from an expensive treatment plant.

Presently we’re owned on this account so we need a choice where every home and business built, throughout the land, must from today forward, come fully equipped with an adequate cistern system providing a free, valuable and essential resource. Those failing compliance will be fined – heavily! Prepare for a fight – despots controlling Earths’ most valuable resource will arm themselves in vigorous opposition.

ALVIN W. SHIER, LETHBRIDGE