John Pugh’s mural, the Drain has attracted quite a bit of attention. Painted on the side of a title company in Bishop, CA [satellite view], the Drain portrays

an agricultural Shangri La appears as a mural within a mural. This vision of the valley’s past derives from old paintings and photos, book descriptions, interviews, and visits to the less effected areas of Owens Valley. Breathing sweet orchard blossoms while gazing at the lush glory of this place 100 years ago, this depiction is not meant to portray a specific vantage point yet rather allow the viewer an ambient experience of the ecology.
If your eyes are diverted to the drainpipe, this is by design. Like a black hole that allows no light to escape, the protruding drainpipe absorbs all color in its proximity. The odd shape surrounding the pipe is actually a preserved section of the under painting, but conceptually it serves as an after image, or ‘ghost blotch’. It is a stain that is created by the absence of color information – or metaphorically, of life. Written words like ‘water’ and ‘tree’ or even ‘green’ are some of the sketch notes, but historically these are the line items that have virtually disappeared into the drain.

Everyone should take a drive up or down the Eastern Sierra. It’s a region of stark beauty, glorious mountains and desolate lakebeds, whose water has long since been shipped 200 miles southwest to the LA Basin via the LA Water and Power District.

Randolph E. Schmid:

“We’re basically hardening the watersheds and feeding them a high-salt diet. There is a direct connection between the number of driveways and parking lots we have and the quality of our water,” said Sujay Kaushal of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg, Md.

I lived in the western US for a number of years. During this time, I became quite familiar with water shortages and local efforts to address these problems. Living in San Francisco (late 1980’s/early 1990’s), I remember many restaurants stopped serving water with meals (unless one asked – 5+ times). I also recall the mandate that residents restrict their bathing frequency to 3X/week. Fast forward to 2005 and I find that Waukesha, just 55 miles east of Madison, faces significant water problems. Felicity Barringer digs in:

The draw-down of water from the deep aquifer was gradual at first, accelerating in the late 1980’s and throughout the next 15 years. In recent measurements, the water level had dropped about 600 feet. And the deeper the water source, the more likely that it would be contaminated with too much radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element.

A must read, for all water consumers: Cadillac Desert.

I generally like Thomas Friedman’s writing. However, he fails to mention Toyota’s large gas guzzling SUV business while praising their “green” hybrid cars. Jock Gill adds his take.