What a joyous

thing rain is!

Especially

summer rain ... especially during a protracted period of drought ... especially

if you can sleep in.

It's Friday

morning, and I woke to the sound of a hard, persistent downpour, echoing

through the rafters. Nothing would have been more pleasant than to have

pulled the covers up and used the narcotic of that heaven-sent symphony

outside to lull(aby) me into and out of half-sleep for an hour or two

... but the show must go on.

Besides, Sallie

Satterthwaite is much better at painting this sort of picture than I am.

So let's talk

about rain and politics.

Rain fills

the lakes back up so you don't have water shortages and you don't have

to deal with your government telling you that you can't wash the car Sunday

... you have to wash it Saturday because your address ends in a seven.

Sorry you were too busy Saturday. Now you'll have to wait until Monday,

which is a work day, so for all practical purposes the car will have to

stay dirty until next Sunday.

All of that,

of course, is dross compared to the inconveniences some people in this

country encounter during droughts ... not being able to take baths, having

to buy bottled water for drinking. Then again, in some countries they

just have to die, which, I suppose, is the ultimate inconvenience.

Stay with me;

I'll get to a point eventually.

On another

recent rainy day as I drove to work in a downpour the news on the radio

was about how the statewide water restrictions will probably remain in

effect for many months to come, and boaters had better be careful because

the water in Lake Lanier is lower than it was last year.

Lower than

last year? After all the rain we've had this spring?

I'm no expert,

but that sounds more like a management problem than a drought problem.

In contrast,

Fayette County's lakes are slap full, and the state's one-size-fits-all

water restrictions are as much of an inconvenience to the local water

system as they are to the general public.

Odd-even is

always a good idea, because the population is growing, and there is a

finite limit on the amount of water available long-term. Odd-even rules

help spread the demand out a little bit ... reduce the peaks and valleys.

It's the state's

insistence on a total ban from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. that's problematic here.

The one restriction reduces peaks and valleys, but the other causes them.

Everybody with an odd address is out there at 8 in the morning running

those sprinklers.

Then they run

them again from 10 to midnight (and who's going to know if they cheat

a little, or a lot, past midnight?) And then the water system people have

to get the tanks full again for the even addresses to water in the morning.

I'm sure at

this point you're expecting me launch into a diatribe about the liberal

solution always being big government, and local government being much

better equipped to solve local problems.

That is, after

all, my natural inclination.

But in this

case I'm afraid I have to waffle a bit.

Water, after

all, is a resource that does not fit within local political borders, or

even regional ones. What we do to the Chattahoochee here in north Georgia

is giving the folks who try to manage West Point Lake, over on the Alabama

border, absolute fits.

Even if we

get all our water from deep underground, we can't escape responsibility

for the effects downhill from here. Floridians have to deal not only with

less water in their aquifers, but also with the giant house-eating sink

holes that can result.

Gov. Roy has

a penchant for superagencies, and as a conservative and a believer in

local control, that makes me nervous.

At the same

time, there are areas like transportation and management of natural resources

where we have to broaden our thinking and build a wider consensus.

It remains

to be seen whether these superagencies are instruments to help us come

up with better ideas that will protect our way of life for the future

or instruments to create a better controlled fiefdom for the leaders of

our state.