Why the White House Sinkhole Isn't Funny
Sorry for the two-month hiatus. Suffice it to say that things have been busy on the home front, particularly as Stacy and I prepare for the June 10th release of The Fate of the Frog. But when I saw this headline, I had the irresistible urge to return to my blog. Who can blame me? Did you read my last blog article?
The sinkhole in the White House lawn is no joke. It is glaring evidence of a serious threat to American infrastructure and drinking water.
As temperatures rise and the population continues to grow, urban, suburban and, heck, even rural stormwater runoff is becoming a serious problem throughout the entire country. Tight-strapped municipalities have, so far, been successful in kicking the ball down the road by insisting the resulting sinkholes, flooding, etc. are private property issues. Those homeowners worst affected don't want to or, more likely, can't foot the bill for what they know to be a communal problem stemming not from their own properties but from their upstream neighbors'. On the other hand, upstream property owners aren't adversely affected, so they don't even think there's a problem, much less want to pay to fix it.
Meanwhile, many municipalities prevent property owners from implementing cost-effective, organic and generally sustainable remedies by requiring costly permitting and expensive engineering, which may be suitable for the required stormwater management but that should be the burden of the city, not individual private property owners.
In many cities, including my own, the required engineered solution frequently involves pipes that not only exacerbate the problem but require regular maintenance (unclogging, flushing, etc.), which becomes the legal responsibility of the private property owner who installed them. With or without pipes and even if (s)he was extremely altruistic and generous - willing to spend every dime required to satisfy all city requests - why would a private property owner want to become legally responsible for infrastructure to handle stormwater runoff from multiple properties (s)he does not even own?
Given the old, failing, and dangerous water systems across the country and, perhaps worse, the critically impaired state of our water resources as a result, it is long past time for municipalities everywhere to replace their bureaucratic buck-passing with effective, forward-thinking and sustainable actions, even if it means increasing revenue and even if that means disputing prohibitive state laws.
Though all of us don't suffer directly from stormwater problems, every human needs clean water to survive, as does every frog.
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Related Articles:
Melissa Rooney: Better Stormwater Solutions (2014)
Durham's Bionomic Education and Training Center and the Future of our Youth (2014)
Starting Over with Clover (2014)
See also:
https://www.urbanss.org (and contact USS if you’d like to get involved)