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Here
Comes the Sun
The
sun finally shined on Virginia this week, and lots
of new mothers may be naming their baby boys Ray.
It
is almost impossible now to remember the drought
conditions in Virginia
a year ago. Creeks and rivers dried up, reservoirs
shrank, dust and sun scorch were everywhere.
Mouths got so dry that tongues stuck in cheeks.
One thing Virginians learned for sure in sun-dried
2002 was the simple truth that the heat, not the
humidity, was responsible for their misery.
But
that was before six months of wet, wet cold, wet
cool, just plain wet. Something happened in the
autumn season last year that shoved the sun and
the dry days into the shadows. It rained and
snowed, rained and stormed, rained and drizzled so
many times that Virginians started counting their
animals by twos. How bad was it? Some Dads stopped
calling their boys “Son.” How bad?
Cheerleaders lead crowds with shouts of “Ra,
Ra.”
By
the first day of June 2003, an AOL online
“American Pulse” poll had over 1.5 million
Internet users responding to a question as to how
they would characterize their spring: 59 percent
said “soggy,” while only 23 percent answered
“sweet.” The 16 percent who answered
“sweltering” obviously were from the planet
Venus. But the widespread reoccurrence of
significant sunshine this week in Virginia,
including a glorious illumination of Virginia Beach’s
broad, new sandy expanse on the weekend, provides
a great opportunity to look back and establish
what really happened.
“We
can trace the origins of this current drought to
1999, but conditions have gotten significantly
worse in the past month,” Gov. Mark R. Warner
said back in August 2002. The governor was not
talking about the budget for once. “Because
short- and long-term weather outlooks do not hold
the promise of enough rainfall to reverse the dry
trend, we must take additional steps to be
prepared for worsening conditions.”
Fortunately
for Virginia, and ultimately the nation, one of
the additional steps the Governor had in mind was
the appointment of the first drought coordinator
for the Commonwealth. The drought, to be honest,
was doing quite well on its own without any
coordination, so Deputy Secretary of Natural
Resources David Paylor, a 28-year veteran of water
conservation and environmental management,
actually took on a drought response task. His team
monitored stream flows, ground water levels and
the impact of the drought on everything from farms
and forestry to recreation and tourism. A large
part of the team was assigned to alternate
expressions of disappointment at the lack of rain
in the forecast (the governor had sought the
intervention of all-seeing broadcast
meteorologists as early as the July 2002 Drought
Summit) with suggestions on how to reduce water
consumption.
It
was okay, for example, to continue to water
children and pets indoors, but increasingly not
okay to water cars or lawns outdoors. Public
school children and college students still could
try to eat the cafeteria food, but cafeteria
workers could skip washing dishes by serving it
with disposable cups, plates and utensils. Some
Virginians could drill new wells without the delay
of getting permits approved, but also remain on
the hook for water use restrictions because they
didn’t own the groundwater they found.
Ostensibly, the main task of the “Drought
Czar” was to mitigate the worst effects through
such measures. In fact, what now must be known as
“His Highness of Hydrology” had the secret
mission to make it rain.
Now,
there are two great difficulties facing any leader
placed in such a tenuous position. One difficulty
is to fail, in which case Paylor would have joined
the rest of the Commonwealth as dust in the wind.
But the other difficulty is to succeed beyond
one’s wildest dreams, and David Paylor turned
out to be a one-man divining rod. Not content to
manage diminishing water resources better for a
couple of months, he got the clouds to roll in and
the rain, snow, sleet, hail and every other form
of water to fall in Virginia non-stop for six
months.
This
is far more than the “40 days and 40 nights”
of a former record holder, though purists may
insist that an asterix be placed next to
Paylor’s name. It only rained most, not all of
his almost 200 days, and not continuously. Still,
all the fast-flowing streams and rivers, the
replenished reservoirs and groundwater tables in Virginia
today must rank as the greatest accomplishment of
the Warner Administration thus far. Breaking years
of drought is right up there with the great tales
of ancient history. Claiming the credit due may
help the administration in its next great
undertaking, a recasting of the “render unto
Caesar” system.
But
as for June 2003, the first step is to turn David
Paylor back to the dry side. After his
anti-drought successes, the future can be so
bright, he’ll have to wear shades. Put him in
charge of the public schools so it can rain
quality and learning for at least six months.
Then
choose between a couple of classic weather
forecasts for the weeks ahead. Nineteenth-century
poet James Russell Lowell suggested, “And
what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever,
come perfect days; Then Heaven tries the earth if
it be in tune, And over it softly her warm ear
lays.” Not bad.
The
Beatles captured it more concisely in the 20th
century with “Here comes the sun; it’s
alright.” And the Rockfish Restaurant in
Virginia
Beach
has guitars from John, Paul and George and the
drumsticks from Ringo on its walls to prove it.
--
June 2, 2003
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