Rain Makes a Difference

Since October of last year Florida has experienced a drought. About 2 inches of rain fell during that period of time. On the last weekend we experiences a succession of  rain and wind cells that gave us 5 inches of beautiful and needed rain.

The yellow grass  and withered plants and trees made our landscape unattractive. The golf courses turned from luscious green to brown and fires were a daily occurrence. Water restrictions we put into force  and even Lake O had to close its locks to boat traffic.

Then came the rain and within a few days everything became green and healthy again. We poor golfers liked the hard dry fairways as we could boast about our 250 yard drives because of the roll. Today we were back at 180 if we were lucky.

Florida from the air looks like half water but believe it or not there is a shortage of potable water. Here in Cape Coral much of our water comes from desalination plants. Water is our most prised  and valuable natural resource.Countries like Canada, Russia and Brazil have an abundance of this resource but much of the world has little or no fresh clean water.

I was surprised to see a report here in our city which stated that 75% of our fresh water is used to grow grass and water golf courses and flush toilets. They are working on this problem and now use recycled sewage water for watering our lawns and the newer low need for water in toilets is making a huge plus in our water usage.

We who are older would laugh at the idea of buying water for drinking other than that piped to our homes. If you look at the shelves in any store today you would see just how big a deal is for drinking water Bottled water is almost the same cost as gasoline and someday it may be much more valuable. Since a few countries have the lions share of fresh water there will come a time when water will become as much an international issue as oil.

In the meantime consider the value of water when you see the magnificent changes to mother earth when it rains.