RoguePundit

Eating Clays and Other Soils

Pregnant women can eat some unusual things to satisfy their urges (end of previous blog here).  There are multiple terms that can be used to describe this phenomenon. 

Pica is a medical disorder characterized by an appetite for largely non-nutritive substances (e.g., coal, soil, feces, chalk, paper, etc.) or an abnormal appetite for some things that may be considered food, such as food ingredients (e.g., flour, raw potato, starch, ice cubes). In order for these actions to be considered pica, they must persist for more than one month, at an age where eating such objects is considered developmentally inappropriate.

The following article is about another.

"I know it is bad but I wanted to sustain the baby, so I eat it," she says, looking at her newborn daughter. While she was pregnant she would eat between 10 and 15 balls of clay each day. Sometimes she roasted them, sometimes she ate them plain. The old women in her community told her the clay would make her baby strong and remove "bad water" from her stomach.

"When I ate it, the vomiting stopped," she says. She understands the idea of gnawing on a rock-hard piece of clay may seem bizarre, but it's surprisingly common among her friends and family in rural Sierra Leone. Most mothers waiting with her at the maternity clinic admitted they also ate clay.

"It's cultural, it's traditional," said Ms. Jalloh's doctor, James Smith. "We have been telling them to stop taking these things."

The ingestion of earth or clay, known as geophagy, is a little-known but relatively widespread phenomenon in parts of Africa and Asia. It's usually consumed by pregnant or lactating women in order to reduce nausea and supplement a mineral-deficient diet. Some researchers suspect the clay coats the gastrointestinal tract and absorbs toxins, which is why a substance commonly found in the clay is used in some Western anti-diarrheal medicines. But it can also contain harmful parasites and cause lead poisoning, intestinal obstruction and colon rupture.

FYI, some Native Americans in California used to practice geophagy, and slaves brought the practice to the Southeast, where it still persists, mostly in rural areas.

Kaolin (also called kaolinite) used to be in and gave part of its name to kaopectate.  Attapulgite (named after Attapulgus, Georgia) is a common clay in the Southeast that's also been used in kaopectate.  Neither is in the current U.S. formulation, but attapulgite is still in the Canadian version...plus a number of other American diarrhea medications.   

Hunger is obviously a sad reason for eating clay, and there's no question that parasites can be an issue if the soil is contaminated with bodily wastes.  However, the article dwelled upon speculation that the practice itself is unhealthy...until it finally got to a very key point.

Dr. Smith said he's not aware of any medical studies about the effects of geophagy on pregnant women and insists more research is desperately needed.

"I don't even know the ingredients of this clay, so we need to do further studies."

If you're going to condemn traditional medicines, it would be great to have proof and to offer alternatives that are affordable and readily available.  Smith offers neither.  Nevertheless, some are trying to restrict supply rather than addressing the demand.  

Not far from the hospital, an entire community labours in the midday sun, knee-deep in mud. The men dig the pits and sieve the clay. The children haul off the buckets, and add salt and herbs. The women break the clay into pieces and roll them into balls. The balls are then sold in bags of 12 at markets across the country. One bag sells for 100 leones, the equivalent of three cents.

"We are not happy doing it," said John Kamara as he wades back into the pit and pours out a bucketful of clay. In a good month he will earn about $60. "I hope after my children are educated they will take me out of this filth," he said.

Some community groups are hoping to curb clay-eating by giving the miners a way out.

"If they're going to stop, they need a substitute," said Ramatu Fornah of the Women's Action for Human Dignity, a community-based organization in the heart of Sierra Leone's clay-mining district. "We've targeted about 30 of them and are teaching them agriculture."

Recently war-torn Sierra Leone is one of the poorest nations in the world, with a GDP per capita of about $700 per year.  It ranks dead last in the human development index.  Two-thirds of the population is already dependent upon subsistence agriculture...which is better than blood diamonds.  Life expectancy there is just 41.8 years. 

Meanwhile, how hard is it for consumers to find other sources of clay, especially when most can't afford a substitute that they may or may not believe is better?

Expendable Workers, Integrity, etc.

Agriprocessors Inc. is a meat processing and packaging company with revenues of about $250 million.  It's lone plant in Postville, Iowa is the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the nation...though nowadays about two-thirds of its products are non-kosher (like Iowa's Best Beef).  Until May 11, a goodly percentage of the plant's workers were illegal immigrants.  That changed when the feds detained 389 workers (including 12 juveniles)--mostly from rural Guatemala--and issued arrest warrants for another 307 in the nation's largest immigration raid thus far.  The company decided to replace the CEO--a son of the owner and founder--a few days after the raid.  Better late than never. 

For years, the company has not treated these workers very well...the same has occasionally been true with the environment and the slaughtered animals.  However, the state had been reticent to take serious actions regarding the illegal workers or their safety.  The raid has gotten the public more interested in what's been going on inside the plant, which has one of the worst safety records in the state.

In 2003, the company reported 83 employee injuries, including smashed ankles, lacerated tendons in hands, smashed arms, and amputated fingers.

In 2004, the number of injuries jumped 45 percent, to 120, with workers being treated for chemical burns to their eyes and feet, third-degree burns, hand lacerations and broken ribs.

In 2005, the number of injuries dropped to 103. They included hearing losses, smashed fingers and severed fingers.

Newer records aren't available yet, and it can be rather difficult to determine how those workers are doing now.  The state has made a number of inspections, which have tended to result in relatively small fines.  According to Iowa OSHA, the fines were often reduced to avoid lengthy appeals and to allow the money to be invested in improved safety and training.  While that sounds okay in theory, sometimes it has the opposite effect.

In early 2006, state officials cited the company for failing to provide protective jackets and boots to workers who used high-pressure hoses to spray corrosive chemicals and scalding water inside the plant as part of the sanitation process.

During an on-site inspection, an executive asked a state inspector whether she would recommend protective "rain suits" for the workers. "Yes!" she said.

She asked the company's operations manager and plant engineer whether they would want rain suits if they had to spray caustic chemicals. According to the inspector's report, both men said, "Absolutely."

But company records indicate that workers had long been forced to either do without the protective gear or purchase it themselves from the company. And because some workers allegedly had no lockers at the plant, they often took their chemical-soaked rain suits home with them at the end of their shift.

...

For at least six years, workers were being charged $30 for the pants and $30 for the jackets. Boots were $20.85. At those prices, 100 rain suits would have generated $8,000 in revenue for the company. By comparison, the state fine for this serious safety violation was $1,000.

The money for the gear was docked from their pay.  There were allegations of beatings, child labor law violations, paying some workers less than minimum wage in cash, and even producing meth at the plant.  The company had earlier been fined for short-weighting the cattle they bought, and unions weren't pleased with the owner and his son for collecting and keeping union dues at a textile plant they own in New Jersey.  Since the raid at the processing plant, several former female employees have claimed that they were offered better working condition in exchange for sexual favors. 

By early this year, multiple federal investigations were underway.

On April 11, ... an informant who worked at the Postville plant told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that word of the impending immigration raid had leaked. Employees were openly discussing the matter, he said.

...

Leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, who were trying to organize Postville workers, were concerned a raid would derail the child-labor investigation. On May 2, the union's Mark Lauritsen asked ICE to refrain from raiding the plant until the labor-law investigation was completed.

...

Court records indicate the Social Security Administration repeatedly warned Agriprocessors that hundreds of its employees - perhaps as much as 78 percent of the work force - appeared to be using fraudulent Social Security numbers or names.

Between 2002 and 2006, the company allegedly received 12 separate, written notices from the Social Security Administration highlighting hundreds of discrepancies in Social Security numbers and employee names.

Two supervisors have been charged with "aiding and abetting the possession and use of fraudulent identification by their workers," and a third of Palestinian origin has fled.  The defiant owner and his sons haven't been charged. 

Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of the embattled kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors, denies he has engaged in unethical labor practices and blames the failure of U.S. immigration policy for his mostly illegal workforce.

...

“Everything is a lie,” Rubashkin told JTA.

After the raid, Agriprocessors went to Labor Ready to get 150 replacement workers.  About ten days later, Labor Ready pulled the workers out of the plant over safety concerns.  Then, Agriprocessors started hiring from homeless shelters in Texas.  Meanwhile, the PR efforts haven't been going very well.

The PR firm hired to represent kosher meat plant Agriprocessors is being accused of posting comments on the Internet under fraudulent names to promote its client. Such tactics bear a striking resemblance to those Agriprocessors itself has been accused of, following the recent immigration raid.

The New York firm, 5W Public Relations - whose clients include McDonald's, pornographer Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild, Pastor John Hagee and a slew of right-wing Jewish organizations - was accused last Wednesday of posting comments on several Jewish Web sites using a false identity.

The firm first blamed an intern, but has since admitted the responsibility belongs with a senior staff member.

What a mess.  The owners and upper-level management need to be slammed hard.

Limited Availability of Human Rabies Vaccine

There's never a good time to be bitten by a rabid or potentially rabid animal.  But with vaccine supplies for us humans being somewhat limited at the moment...

Vaccine supplies are being saved for people who have been bitten by animals. CDC is discouraging preventive use of the vaccine by people, such as travelers to areas with widespread dog rabies or cave explorers, who are at increased risk of bites from rabid animals.

(CDC Rabies Chief) Rupprecht today told the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that plans are under way to prepare for an actual rabies vaccine shortage, but that stopgap measures should extend supplies until normal vaccine production resumes.

...

Sanofi Pasteur, which supplies about half of the U.S. rabies vaccine for humans, in June 2007 began renovating its Imovax Rabies vaccine facility in France. Before then, the company stockpiled enough vaccine to meet expected demand through mid-to-late 2009, when the facility should come back on line.

But the company guessed wrong -- there was an increase in rabies among wild animals, and demand spiked. That shouldn't have been a problem, except that the FDA discovered manufacturing problems with the Novartis RabAvert vaccine. Novartis had been supplying the other 50% of the U.S. market.

Suddenly, Sanofi Pasteur found itself with greatly increased demand and no supply of new vaccine. Short supplies have led the CDC to suspend recommendations for preventive rabies vaccination and to make contingency plans for how to deal with shortfalls.

Why did the explanation start with Sanofi Pasteur when problems at Novartis are causing the near-shortage?  Here's a link to the FDA's lengthy warning letter to Novartis regarding its rabies vaccine and a couple of other products.  It seems there were a range of contamination, sterility, and virus inactivation issues with certain lots of RabAvert.  These were not the first rabies vaccine manufacturing problems at the Marburg, Germany plant.  

FYI, if the name of that city rings a bell, note that a close and deadly relative of the Ebola virus was named after Marburg, because that's one of the places where primate lab workers first died of the disease (previous blog here).  Anyway...

Fortunately, Rupprecht says some lots of the Novartis vaccine have been released by the FDA, with more lots expected in July and later this fall.

"We are not out of the woods yet -- summer is rabies season -- but we have breathing room," Rupprecht says. "Not all is well, but we are in a code yellow situation, not code red."

Until rabies vaccine supplies are back to normal, Rupprecht says, people -- especially travelers -- should avoid contact with animals.

"You don't need to get that picture with the monkey on your shoulder," he says. "And if you are going to be a tourist, you need to be attuned to the fact that uncontrolled dog rabies exists around the world."

That warning should work with maybe five or ten people.  

Maybe a New Area Code

Our Public Utility Commission (PUC) expects that the 541 area code will run out of numbers by the first quarter of 2011.  Therefore, some of us are going to get a new one.  But who?

One good possibility is to follow the example set in the 503 area: Just add a new number, as 971 was made available in 2000 for new customers in the 503 area.

That’s the solution recommended by a consultant and the telephone industry. Customers would keep their numbers, but local calls would require 10-digit dialing, including the area code.

But the Public Utility Commission is looking for other suggestions as well, said spokesman Bob Valdez. It is holding a series of 18 public meetings beginning Thursday.

Only some of the meetings--none of them in Southern Oregon--are currently listed at PUC's website.  

A decision is expected in the fall, with the changes taking effect in 2010.

The other options:

* Break the 541 area into two sections. Most of central and eastern Oregon would maintain the 541 area code, while the western half of the state would add a new area code on top of the 541 code. This option would give customers only a six-year respite before additional changes were required.

* Expand the 971 area code to the entire state, a solution good for 11 to 15 years before a new solution would be needed.

* Split the Willamette Valley from central, eastern and southern Oregon. Give one of the two sections the 541 area code, and give the other a new number — and have those customers bear the cost of making the change in changing stationery, business cards and so forth. That option would be good for 20 years in one section, 29 years the other.

Such is life.

Paying for the Right to an Attorney

It's not Sunshine Week--that was in March.  But, the following story about excessive government secrecy deserves a wider hearing.  

Months after two men were convicted and sentenced for murder, Yakima County officials are refusing to release records of how defense attorneys in the case spent $2 million in taxpayer dollars.

County officials have turned down a public records request by the Yakima Herald-Republic on the grounds that billing records are sealed by a Superior Court judge and the courts are not governed by the Washington State Public Records Act.

The bills were submitted to Yakima County by several attorneys defending two men convicted of killing a father and his 3-year-old daughter in their Yakima apartment in 2005.

From a legal perspective, this would initially seem like a no-brainer. 

The state Legislature last year amended the Public Records Act to make it clear that legal fees paid for by taxpayers are public records, and an appeal ruling last month in a Thurston County case applied the new rule retroactively, Monahan (the Herald-Republic's attorney) said.

"We don't have any objection to the redaction of protected work product, we simply want to know where the money went," he said.

Yet, the county government has repeatedly failed to turn over the records.  Thus, the Herald-Republic has decided to sue.  Why have things gotten to this point?

"We have tried every tack short of a lawsuit to break through this unfathomable system," she said. "Part of the frustration has been that we never get a yes or no on our request for documents. It's always, 'We'll have to ask somebody else.'"

Yakima County Prosecutor Ron Zirkle said he supports the newspaper's attempt to gain access to the billing records but also does not want to run afoul of the court.

He said his deputies will file a motion, supplementary to the newspaper's lawsuit, asking the court for direction. "My job is to follow the law," he said, "only I don't know what the law is."

...

A central figure in the case has been Superior Court Judge James Lust, who ordered the records sealed after he was appointed to oversee requests for defense spending. In that role, Lust came to be known as "the budget judge."

Brendan Monahan, the Herald-Republic's attorney, said having a judge sign off on all the financial paperwork in the case was a setup peculiar to Yakima County that blurred the judiciary's role.

Why was a judge involved in approving the costs, and why did he order something that seems to clearly fly in the face of the law?  Here's where things get a bit messy.

...the dispute also exposes shortcomings in the statutory framework of potential death penalty cases in Washington and fears by some that defense attorneys are deliberately trying to bankrupt counties as a way of scaring off prosecutors.

Prosecutor Zirkle made a controversial call early on when he gave Sanchez's defense team of Jackie Walsh and Steve Witchley a year to prepare a report on their client called a mitigation packet. Walsh and Witchley, both from Seattle, were on a short list of lawyers in Washington qualified to handle such cases.

The mitigation packet is an informal practice in Washington based on case law that requires prosecutors to consider circumstances in a defendant's background that might mitigate the decision to seek the death penalty.

It is not required by law, but prosecutors, mindful that roughly half of the state's death penalty cases have been overturned by the courts over the past 20 years, have adopted the practice as a hedge against such appeals.

... 

Despite being given a year to prepare, Walsh and Witchley missed the first deadline, then broke several more before they were tossed off the case by Superior Court Judge James Hutton for misconduct related to their handling of a witness in the case.

The state is now investigating the attorneys for witness tampering.  They'd already racked up about $1 million in charges when they were tossed.  And after their replacements finally got the mitigation packet ready, the prosecutor decided not to press for the death penalty, claiming weak evidence that might not stand up to appeal.  Yes, it's the same prosecutor who says he doesn't know what the law is when it comes to releasing the financial records on the case. 

Sanchez was convicted and sentenced to life without parole, and the other man pled guilty before the trial and was sentenced to thirty years.  But was that $2 million well spent?  The public has a right to know.

Not My Left Foot

This just gets curiouser and curiouser.

A human left foot was found Monday on Westham Island in Ladner - the fifth disarticulated foot discovered since August on B.C.'s south coast.

Disarticulate:  "To separate at the joints; disjoint."

Delta Police and the B.C. Coroners Service are trying to establish the identity of the remains and determine whether they can be linked to the recovery of four other feet. The last one found before this was located just upriver last month.

"At this point we really don't know what we're dealing with," said Const. Sharlene Brooks Monday evening. "Without the forensic side of it established, it's too early to say there are linkages."

But, she said, the discovery is being treated as a criminal investigation.

Monday's discovery was a left foot, while the other four were right feet. All five had been submerged in water. Three feet were discovered on Gulf Islands beaches: Jedediah Island (Aug. 20), Gabriola Island (Aug. 26) and Valdes Island (Feb. 8). A fourth was found encased in a running shoe on Kirkland Island, near the Massey Tunnel, on May 22.

The first four were all in socks and running shoes (two of them size 12s), and none had been "forcibly removed."  This link shows a map of where the feet were found...the most recent two islands are in the Fraser River delta.

Brooks said that at this time of year, it's not unusual to find human remains washed up on shore.

"It's just unique that this is another foot. That's for certain," she said.

A passerby noticed the foot floating in a shoe, and pulled it to shore before calling police, Brooks said.

She said it could be some time before police are able to say whether the foot's DNA matches a known missing person, or any of the right feet found previously.

Forensics is sure a lot faster on TV.

These feet have got folks speculating all sorts of things, including a serial killer, victims of a small plane crash three years ago where only one of the five bodies was found, etc.  An oceanographer says that the feet could have drifted from 1,000 miles away, but figures they probably floated down the Fraser River.

Learning to Farm

It's just farming; it can't be that hard, right?

The Rev. Robert Jeffrey Sr. is a self-described city boy who admits he had some romantic ideas about farming — that is, until he got his hands dirty and realized how many things can go wrong when launching a small agribusiness.

Earlier this year, Jeffrey helped develop a vision: start a farm and bring affordable, organic produce to the poorest families in Seattle's urban core. If it worked, he figured, it wouldn't just help people's bodies; it just might give young people in his often-violent community a chance to grow a little themselves. He teamed up with a lifelong farmer, hired a crew of workers, and found land near Duvall, where they planted peas, turnips and greens. But as summer approaches, instead of finding a bountiful harvest, Jeffrey and his crew have discovered that farming is no picnic.

They had to lay off eight workers. Because of poorly prepared soil, thousands of young plants had to be uprooted from the Duvall pasture and hauled to a field in a Kent industrial park. If they aren't replanted soon, the plants will die. And then last week, the farm's pickup broke down.

Jeffrey has a noble goal...and it's understandable that he could be in over his head. But what about the supposed lifelong farmer? 

The big idea sprouted in January, when a 57-year-old former Louisiana sharecropper named Jesse Grey walked into Jeffrey's church office in the Central Area.

For nearly two decades, Grey told him, he had been searching from Omak to Sultan for land to farm as a teaching tool for at-risk kids. For a time, Grey had 5 acres near Shelton, but it just didn't work, he said. It was too far for people King County's poorest African-American families to make the trek to Mason County.

Jeffrey liked what he was hearing. As a founding member of the Black Dollar Days Task Force, a local nonprofit aimed at helping minority-owned businesses, he has immersed himself in issues of "environmental justice."

It's just not fair that poor people don't have the same access to organic foods as their richer neighbors, he said.

A joint venture was born: The task force provided the funding and Grey, founder of Cutting Edge Inner City Farms, brought the organic know-how, culled from years of experience and research.

In February, the partners signed a five-year lease for 24 acres on West Snoqualmie River Road Northeast near Duvall on land they say has been certified organic.

Grey can't have the knowledge and experience being claimed in this article.  He made a huge, rather basic mistake by skimping on the soil preparation.     

Amid the weeds and rocks, Grey and a team of workers planted their crop and watched seedlings push up through the dirt.

...

But soon Grey realized a terrible mistake: The clay loam soil, compacted by decades of cattle grazing, had only been turned once, and it became hard and cracked. Water and nutrients weren't getting to the tender shoots.

The weather has been favorable for the crops he chose (except the tomatoes and basil), and the land as described should certainly have enough nutrients for the seedlings to at least get off to a good start.  Sounds like he's learning the hard way about clay.

...Grey found a widow in Kent who had 20 acres that had lain fallow since her husband's death. It, too, is considered organic, he said.

In exchange for clearing two miles of blackberry bushes along her driveway and planting alfalfa for her two cows, Grey, Jeffrey and their crew were given free use of her land until their first crop is harvested. In the meantime, they will be able to properly prepare the Duvall land for a winter planting.

...

As a steady rain fell in Duvall last Thursday, a group of men uprooted hundreds of pea plants and loaded them into a truck for the 35-mile trip to Kent.

Grey plucked a baby turnip from the soil: "We don't want to lose these — this is the cash money here."

So what type of soil does the new land have and is it ready to receive a range of crops?

Jeffrey and his team have spent over $40,000 and may not make the rent next week.  They are also seeking volunteer labor to help them with the replanting.  Let's hope they're still not in over their heads.

Our Cool Spring

Last Friday, NOAA published the following:

The March-May spring season was the 36th coolest on record for the contiguous United States, according to an analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Separately, last month ended as the 34th coolest May for the contiguous United States, based on records dating back to 1895.

The average spring temperature of 51.4 degrees F was 0.5 degree F below the 20th century average. The average May temperature of 60.3 degrees F was 0.7 degree F below the 20th century mean, based on preliminary data.

Meanwhile for precipitation...

It was the driest March-May on record in California.  But parts of the Midwest are rather sick of the rain.   

Several strong weather systems dumped heavy rains across parts of the central Plains, Ohio Valley, and mid-Atlantic states. In some areas, this pattern has continued for the last six months, with Missouri and Illinois having the wettest December-May on record.  By the end of May, 24 percent of the contiguous U.S. was classified in moderate-to-extreme “wet spell” conditions compared to 16 percent six months ago, based on the Palmer Index.

Here's the latest Palmer Index map.

There are a number of drought indices...all have their strengths and weaknesses.  The Palmer Index is based upon a soil moisture algorithm which tends to be more accurate over longer periods (several months rather than several weeks).  The one that gets the most press is the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is actually a compilation of indices.  Here's its latest map.    

Unfortunately, the general public doesn't understand that droughts as assessed by the U.S. Drought Monitor aren't simply driven by weather.  Man's utilization of surface and groundwater often plays a major role.  We're not alone in that confusion.  For instance, a goodly percentage of Australia's drought problems are due to the impacts of unsustainable water usage, not below-average rainfall.

A Lack of Conservation Penalty

Sometimes one's lack of conservation is indicative of illicit activities.

After nearly 10 months, two people have been sentenced for running a major pot growing operation in a number of properties around Arcata.

Following a plea agreement, Arcata residents John Devoe, 42, and Clare Holmes, 36, were sentenced Wednesday to felony probation and 30 days in jail for commercially growing marijuana in four Arcata properties.

Maggie Fleming, a Humboldt County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said the two owned the titles to six properties raided in August 2007 by agents with the Humboldt County Drug Task Force after an anonymous tip.

Of the six properties raided, two of them -- one in Trinidad and another in Arcata -- were found to be clean, Fleming reported.

All together, officers found 234 plants and 24 pounds of marijuana. As part of the pleas, the defendants agreed to forfeit $66,000 from bank and stock accounts, and from money found at a residence.

...

Agents used PG&E records for the properties to obtain search warrants. Those records showed the homes used more than 18,000 kilowatt hours during a 16 month period prior to the search.

It varies by state whether our utility bills are a matter of public record.  Speaking of that, remember last year when Al Gore was being slagged for how much energy he was using in his mansion (embarrassing him into installing some expensive solar panels)?

...according to the Tennessee think tank, while the average American household consumed 10,656 kilowatt-hours last year, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 – more than 20 times the national average.

In other words when it comes to home electricity usage, 18,000 kilowatt-hours over 16 months isn't that much over the national average.  But, that and an anonymous tip was evidently enough to get a warrant for the six properties in question.  Small homes, I guess... 

Conservation Penalties

The public is being bombarded with various strategies for conserving resources.  For instance...

Better insulation at home, less use of the car and even giving up an electric toothbrush can help people in rich nations halve emissions of greenhouse gases, a U.N. report said on Thursday.

"Adopting a climate-friendly lifestyle needn't require drastic changes or major sacrifices," according to the 202-page U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) book entitled "Kick the CO2 Habit: the U.N. Guide to Climate Neutrality".

But what if you're already doing a good job of conserving, and then something like the following happens?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's statewide drought declaration Wednesday was hardly news to north state water suppliers, who already are coping with cutbacks and calling on customers to conserve as sizzling summer temperatures loom.

The Bella Vista Water District has been most draconian, imposing a "drought surcharge" on customers who fail to cut their consumption by 25 percent compared to last year. The district--which serves a host of agricultural customers along with northeast Redding residents--will charge residential users an extra 10 cents per hundred cubic feet of water they use beyond the threshold.

Bella Vista officials learned in April that the district would get only half its typical share of federal Central Valley Project (CVP) water. The district avoided mandatory rationing this year only because it was able to get supplemental water from the Clear Creek Community Services District in Happy Valley.

My parents--ever frugal--lived through the drought in San Jose during the late '80s - early 90s.  The concept there for driving water conservation was similar--take a percentage of one's average consumption and assess a stiff surcharge on any usage above that amount.  They really worked to avoid that surcharge.

But, they already shut off the shower while sudsing, didn't run the water when brushing, rarely ran the dishwasher, didn't have a water feature, rarely washed vehicles, etc., so there was little to save there.  My mom would stop the washing machine and siphon the dirty wash water so they could use it to flush the toilets...and they only flushed because of solids.  They lost fruit trees and perennial vegetables (like asparagus) because those crops suffer without summer water.  Et cetera. 

In other words, because my folks always conserved, they suffered more than most during the drought.  Had they deeper pockets, they could have just paid to consume as desired.  Lesson learned...if the weather begins to look ominously dry, start wasting water. 

Unsuprisingly, my folks enjoy the greater independence of living on a well nowadays.