"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.