Southern California is facing a severe drought. Rainfall this year is the lowest since the 1880’s, and Los Angeles County has been sucking so much water to fill our needs that we’ve actually reversed the flow of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Last month at a corporate retreat I and the other attendees were treated to a presentation on this very matter by a local city manager who stressed the severity of the situation and the lack of good solutions. In the City of Los Angeles, the “drought busters,” last seen in the 1980’s, are back in action, issuing fines to people they see wasting water — such as individuals hosing off sidewalks and restaurants serving water to diners who didn’t request it. On Monday in Burbank, Assemblyman Paul Krekorian held a briefing on local water issues. (You can read coverage of this event here.) This is a serious issue. As I told my assistant last week, I’m not concerned about oil shortages — the existing pools already identified will last long enough for the development of new, alternative energy and manufacturing technologies. Water, on the other hand, I’m worried about. Even my 5-year-old son noticed Thanksgiving weekend as we were hiking through the mountains behind Glendale and crossing what had once been practically a river and now was a bone-dry gulch: “Daddy, remember when Lex threw his backpack in the water here?” Now the remembrance was puzzling, with the event impossible.

So you can imagine my glee the other day when it started to rain. It was coming down in glorious cascades — not a torrential downfall, but a serious enough rainfall to make one wonder where the umbrella was kept. One of the scripts I was carrying into my car actually got wet and, later as a result, crinkly. There were water spots on my jacket. Some of the rain got into my car with me. It was like an old friend had returned unexpectedly.

As I got into my car, though, and thought about all that I have seen here in Los Angeles these 19 years, and the way these things have been reported, I was sure what I would hear when I turned on the radio to listen to the news as I watched the rain come down. And I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s what the local newscaster said: “Flash flood warning is in effect….”

This is why I keep saying what I keep saying about the news: Use at your own risk.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.