"ARROYO" MEANS "STREAM" (C)1992 Alan M. Schwartz First there were seven years of California drought. The reservoirs were drained until they contained but a dangerously few feet of water. The soil was totally desiccated. The water table had dropped dangerously below the grasp of wells. Voluntary water conservation provided the ultimate opportunity for venal tax-gorged politicians to raise the water levies to astronomical levels, and ask for higher rates still. Elected officials publicly prayed for rain and privately gloried in the continued despotism they were so privileged to high-handedly wield. Disaster presages political triumph. Every now and again resonant wind and surface sea temperature interactions within this planet's southerly hemisphere reverse moisture flow in the Northern Hemisphere's Pacific Ocean. This is called an El Nino. The jet stream splits in two. Tremendous quantities of airborne water vapor race across California, being squeezed as they are forced over the mountains, providing our watershed with its fluid. This year, the Philippino volcano El Chichon saw fit to belch 1.5 cubic miles (miles!) of rock dust and sulfuric acid aerosol into the El Nino flow, providing abundant condensation nuclei, and awarding us 15 inches of rain and more in five days. Gophers, earthworms and mobile home park residents were treading water. The drought was over, California was saved, and STILL THE POLITICIANS COMPLAINED! Bitch, bitch, bitch... When you build an immoderately expensive condominium development on streets bearing the name "Arroyo," you had best have first looked in your Spanish/English lexicon, noting "arroyo" means "stream." Where do you think all that water cascading down from the saturated mountains travels on its way to the ocean? That is why they are called "streams." It STREAMS on past the condos and the BMWs, five and ten and fifteen feet deep, loaded with mud, rocks, and debris, sweeping everything not anchored to bedrock before it. Is this a surprise? Emptied watershed basins and reservoirs, the objects of politicians' sanctimonious warnings for the past five years, are now abundantly overflowing with that which they were supposedly designed to trivially contain. Having had seven years in which to draw down their levels, you would thing the managers of our water system would not now be flooding out the folks downstream as their catchments fill so high that they threaten to burst. Hey guys, the rainy season has another two months to go. Where are you going to put all that H-2-0? Is water rationing still in effect? Should I remove the brick from my toilet tank? When are my water rates going to drop to pre-drought levels? Make it attractive, and I'll let the taps run day and night to save your pitiful backsides. What will you pay me for the privilege? The environmentalists, those fish-kissers and bunny-huggers whose political machinations so mutilated the civil engineering of public water and sewage control, now weep into their granola as thousands of cubic yards per second of semi-treated sewage overflow Green-approved New Age treatment plants and fill the local ocean. Deep ocean disposal conduits crumble and burst as impossible demands are placed upon them. Seven years' accumulation of pesticides, herbicides, soil fumigants, fertilizer residues, and dog poop are violently swept through the underground tunnels and out to sea, liberally coating the local beaches. I do not comprehend the font of Environmentalist concern. This is the way Nature works when civil engineers do not build and design those nasty, unnatural chemical treatment plants. This is the way Nature works when beautiful ten foot wide sewer pipes are not buried in the ground and periodically surveyed and maintained, and to hell with the snail darter. The unceasing news specials gloriously splaying human misery, material loss, and even death by drowning across local color TVs pre-empted an eagerly anticipated episode of "Donahue." It was devoted to Rochester, NY women who won the right to walk those streets topless, claiming protected genderless non-discrimination under the law. There were to be no unclad breasts bounteously insinuating into my recreational nook. Sixty minutes of exquisite jiggler exploitation were replaced by five hours of mudslides. I was shattered. The tragedy and horror of California's floodings touches us all.