Rain, Rain, Go -- For God's Sake, Go ...

… some place you are needed. Seattle got 7.2 inches in March – twice the average March since data collection began in the 19th Century -- and half-again more than March, last year. Even the most sodden Seattleite is fed up. Yes, I know, weather isn’t climate and No, this isn’t another column about polar bears – but wouldn’t it be just plain prudent to act as if human behavior was partly responsible? Dick Tompkins and Bryna Webber, dear photographer friends, have been documenting global water issues – in Iceland, Bhutan, Kenya and Antarctica; that’s a Masai herder boy moving his family’s skin and bones cattle to Tanzania after this three-year drought in Kenya.

The water issue? Distribution – too much here, too little there. And water issues are dangerous issues – while men may fight over alcohol, they kill over water.

A second thing Seattle is famous for is entrepreneurial opportunity. We’ve got a lot of smart guys – smart water guys over at Bill and Melinda’s new place; Bezos is a smart distribution guy. The world’s two largest boring machines – that’s boring machines, not boring machines – just punched though under Capital Hill and the Federal Cut to bring light rail to the UW. There’s an idea thirty years late; we turned down Federal money back then to bring light rail to Seattle. Portland was next in line; now they have real light rail, not those cranberry-colored toys running around Amazon’s new neighborhood. Meanwhile, we are building a huge plant to dump fresh water run-off into the salt water of Puget Sound. Federal dollars are available for boring machines and pipelines and storm-water run-off plants.

Why don’t some smart guys and Federal money start piping rain, if not to Africa, at least to Nevada or Texas? A lot more friendly than piping oil – and just as many jobs.