Hard Water

Due to the far reaching effects of the current water crisis, Satire1 set up a panel of experts and average water users to discuss its origins and ramifications.

Expert A: Water had been enjoying its longest boom since the Stone Age. Never has it been as popular or fashionable as it is now. As people began to identify more with their water it graduated into a near necessity so naturally people wanted to own their own well. This did not go unnoticed by the banks and lending institutions that got together with Wall Street and invented ways to monetize the drilling of America.

Expert B: Now it’s important to understand that everybody drilled everybody else in this process. The real problem is that even those of us who weren’t seduced by this frenzy are getting drilled now.

Expert A: Overzealous lenders and drillers may have ignored their fiduciary obligations and persuaded landowners to drill in unproductive areas promising a waterfall on their investments. There are a lot of dry holes out there and many that do no more than bleed off once productive wells.

Expert C: The over drilling has led to mineralization of the entire nation’s water supply. Rivers, creeks, springs, wells and reservoirs have all hardened. We are now living in hard water times.

Expert B: And the water is only going to get harder.

Citizen 1: Isn’t there something the Federal Government can do to soften the water? It’s just been hell on my hair.

Expert A: President Bush has said that he believes the water could begin to soften as early as next year and that this would be a short mineralization. While he is more optimistic than most his administration has taken steps to contain the crisis. Rushing the Army Corps of Engineers in to save Poland Springs might have averted a catastrophic disruption to the nation’s water table.

Citizen 2: And people throughout the country whose wells taste like the Dead Sea won’t get any help except a for few hand holding programs from Congress.

Citizen 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t get a comb through Hillary or Obama’s head. I think McCain’s wife combs his hair.

Citizen 2: It’s the same old story. The rich drink bottled water while the poor have to survive on tap.

Expert C: Water supplies across the globe have been affected. The pain really is widespread. We are living in a global village where if it rains in New York someone in China gets wet.

Citizen 3: I first noticed it in my underwear. I can’t tell you what hell this hard water can make of your laundry.

Expert B: You have to understand everybody got thirsty. It wasn’t just the big guys or the middle guys or the small fries. There was so much water flowing you’d think people would get bloated just looking at it but it made them thirstier. And the more water they saw the thirstier they got.

Don Arrup
Satire1