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About a month ago, the Denver government announced that the city will save about $10,000 this year from the $28,000 that they spent last year on bottled water.
At first, I wondered why any city that imports 42 billion gallons of water each year from remote valleys would need to buy so much as a pint of bottled water. But now I realize that Denver took the wrong course. Instead of cutting back, they should require that all water entering the Mile High City be bottled.
For city dwellers, one benefit is obvious. No more of this occult diamond-square-triangle method of reckoning your irrigation day by the phase of the moon and a street number. Just fetch the carboys and water whenever your back and your bank balance are up to the challenge.
This would encourage conservation. Many exotic phreatophytic yards would soon be replaced by xeriscapes of drought-tolerant native plants, and my fellow hay-fever sufferers would be most grateful.
Rural areas would benefit as well. When a city builds a water project in a rural locale now, there's no substantial or lasting economic benefit.
If some outside company came in with a mine or a sawmill, it would pay property taxes and provide lots of jobs. A water project provides some construction jobs -- locals may even get a few -- but after that, it pays no local taxes, and may employ half a dozen at most.
But if Denver required bottled water, then private bottling plants -- providers of employment and payers of taxes -- would spring up throughout the hinterlands. Transporting the bottles into the city, and hauling the empties back, would keep the railroads busy and add jobs to a state economy that needs them.
How many jobs? The American brewing industry employs 32,000 people to provide 6 billion gallons a year, which works out to about 191,000 gallons per employee. Even if Denver cut its water consumption in half, that's still 21 billion gallons, or 110,000 jobs -- far more than United Airlines ever would have provided.
Further, these jobs would be dispersed around the state, thereby reducing metro pollution and congestion.
Politically, this would heal our state's divisions. No
longer would rural areas oppose water projects. Instead,
they would welcome bottling plants, and they would promote
their products: Take the taste test. 57% prefer Fraser
River Extra Gold to Blue River Pale Export.
Life is
short. Take it to the limit. Arkansas Heavy Metal
Water.
Roaring Fork Designer Water. The Liquid of
Aspen.
As it is, rural areas have only two exports -- water and smart kids -- and they don't get a nickel for either. Perhaps there's no solution for the smart-kid exodus, but the other problem could have been solved if only Denver had made the right decision about bottled water.
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