Dying Longton Part Eleven; What To Do? If You Want to Try, Try These

[CCarl]

Below are two recommendations that will help our dying town. These have been suggested by private parties, and are not on our City government's radar, as far as I know.

Recommendation One
The first recommendation is a response to a recent missive from Tucker Carlson on how we are all going to die when we no longer have diesel fuel. He refers to diesel as possibly our most precious resource. Here is a link to his post;  https://youtu.be/fm1GzvBtLlw?si=S0Jm7FrYNHBdReaz

Tucker is naive, oil reserves are not our most precious resource, nor our most valuable. Oil is more likely number 3. Drinking water is number 1, and it is equally in crisis. Number 2 is electricity.

This change in direction requires nothing from city government, except to stay out of the way. The actions of private landowners, producers, and consumers are all that is needed. Here is what needs to happen to diminish the threat imposed when the world runs out of diesel, as Tucker claims is going to happen. We need not worry about global things beyond our reach, but we do need to react locally. Ranchers and farmers who have producing oil wells need to step forward. They need to invest a bunch of their debt (i.e. wealth on paper) into a small privately funded and operated refinery to produce diesel fuel from some of the oil they pump, not from all of it.

The diesel they make would not be for export, it would be for use by local landowners to power their farm equipment, and to ship their harvests to local markets. None of this locally produced fuel would be used to cross any State line, nor sold across a State line. Therefore interstate commerce is NOT involved, only intra-state. Therefore the extraction and production is outside the federal government's jurisdiction. And then we will have diesel, we will have crops to plant, maintain, and harvest, and we will have local markets to sustain us. Every rural county needs its residents to follow this type of recommendation. This is the local solution to Tucker's concern.

Until local landowners and producers are willing to take risks for local benefits instead of international ones, no change in course will happen. When/if diesel dries up, the international component will also be gone, and local action will be all we have. We best get started on that now! Crop farmers also need to partially shift gears from crops that feed animals to crops that feed people. That is of equal or greater importance than diesel production. As of this post, I do not believe there is one acre of commercial row crops for human consumption under production in our county. That must change.

This isn't fixing things Tucker's way, it is fixing things by decentralization. I'm talking about planning for decentralization to happen, whether it happens by people fixing government or by government continuing to run amok. The design solution is creativity. The default solution is anarchy, which will be a more painful pathway to creativity.


Recommendation Two
This one deals with our most important resource, potable water. Various websites say public data indicates 27 to 30 percent of an average home's indoor water consumption is attributable to flush toilets. That number boggles my mind. 'We' waste more than a fourth of our inside water use by flushing away our human waste. That is a sacrilege. Many ancient cultures, so-called primitive cultures, and contemporary native cultures consider water to be sacred. They understand its value, modern man does not. [It is also a sacrilege because human waste is a safe soil nutrient for gardening, regardless of what the EPA says. Mankind has used animal and human poop for crops for millennia before the so-called modern system of waste disposal was developed as a source of government revenue.]

It is time we end the sacrilege, especially considering we started being water-rationed this summer, and if the drought stays around, so will the water shortage and rationing. Here is another recommendation that needs no input from city government, except the possibility of a change in ordinance on the part of City Council. I am dismayed Water District Twenty does not have a mitigation plan for water shortages that include this, or other measures that reduce water consumption (except for rationing). It is time to think outside the box.

WE NEED A SMALL GROUP OR PANEL OF OUR CITY PRIVATE-PROPERTY OWNERS TO COMPLETE A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF MAKING A CITY-WIDE CONVERSION OF FLUSH TOILETS TO TOILETS THAT DO NOT REQUIRE WATER USE.

Here's the analysis outline. 1) Every household, business, and public building would have its choice of one no-flush toilet, either (a) a composting toilet, or (b) an electric toilet, 2) every household, business, and public building would have all its other inside waste water diverted into a grey-water system. The grey-water system would have two options, (a) a mound drain field system useful for gardening, or (b) a buried storage tank. Option (a) would require the use of safe detergents and cleaners. Option (b) would require the owner to furnish his/her own system of pumping out of the storage tank. 3) If a household, business, or public building wanted a second or third no-flush toilet, that additional cost would be on them.

That simple process would reduce City-wide inside water use by 25 to 30 percent. At what cost? That is Step 4), identifying bulk-purchase toilet costs, grey-water line material costs, and installation labor costs; then sharing those costs on a spreadsheet for every householder to review and comment on. Then comes Step 5), finding funding to convert from flush toilets, whether it be from donations, charity, philanthropy, or tax-funded grants. [Oh my gawd, I'm advocating the potential practicality of using money stolen from taxpayers! Forgive me!]

Is anyone willing to 'pick up the ball and run with that'? Let me tell you, Longton would become an international trendsetter if such a project were undertaken, and successfully seen to completion. It's up to us folks, apparently no one is going to do the leg work for us. We are seventeen months into the worst current drought in North America, and no official entity has proposed anything other than bans, including our water district. And believe me, our City government doesn't know how to undertake it. We would, however, need to have one hundred percent participation, an all-voluntary improvement on life for dying Longton.

But there is one more benefit we would all 'enjoy'. Once implemented, our sewer system would be dry, useless, and obsolete. The lines and the ponds would be abandoned, and every current user would save $312.00 per year in user fees now imposed by the City. Part of the analysis process would involve looking at City ordinances to see what lawful changes would be required to rid ourselves of the economically burdensome octopus of sewer lines, then compelling City Council to get its collective mindset in gear, and do something meaningful in its service to us. We can make it happen. No one will make it happen for us. Remember, making our lives better and making government smaller is ALWAYS met with resistance.