My lawn is going brown.

            Just a short while ago, I was having trouble keeping up with its growth. Abundant rain so nourished the grass that my 17 horsepower ride-on mower bogged down in places. I was glad I wasn’t depending on human muscle power.

            Of course, that same rain had other consequences. Between rain and snow melt, Okanagan Lake rose to flood levels, and beyond.

            At its highest, Okanagan Lake rose to 343.25 metres above sea level. The lake’s normal high level, called “full pool,” is considered to be 342.5 metres above sea level. The highest previous level was 343 metres, back in 1948, a year that saw most of the Fraser Valley underwater because of flooding.

            A recent news story documented the costs of high lake levels. Two million sandbags. Over 39 kilometres of sandbag barriers. Some 40,000 hours of labour, by 160 provincial staff, to say nothing of municipal employees. About $12 million in unplanned expenses. And at least as much again to remove and dispose of the sandbags, to clean up the debris left by the flooding along the high-water line.

Discernable damage

            I can attest to some of that damage personally. I walk our dog along the waterfront below our home every morning. Or rather, I used to walk our dog along the waterfront. Then rising lake levels inundated parts of the trail. I started wearing gumboots. The lake kept rising. I quit using the trail at all.

            Now that the lake has started to decline again, I have gone back to the trail. Some of it has gone completely, sucked out into the depths of the lake by crashing waves. Some of it is buried under piles of gravel thrown up by those same waves. Tangled root systems lie exposed to the air. Logs 12 inches in diameter (30 cm, for consistency) have been tossed into the bushes well back from the waterline. Debris litters the ground.

            And some parts of the trail are still navigable only by kayak.

            Let’s put that amount of water into perspective. Okanagan Lake has a surface area of 348 square kilometres. The lake normally has a seasonal rise and fall of a little more than a metre; this year it rose more than two metres above winter levels.

            That’s close to 700 million cubic metres of surplus water. My calculations say that’s equivalent to 28,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Or enough water to cover Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, with one metre depth of water.

Historical roots

            But my lawn is going brown.

            It would seem to me that I would be helping to alleviate the flooding crisis by irrigating my parched lawn 24 hours a day. I’d be taking water out of the lake, wouldn’t I? I’d be putting that water to good use, wouldn’t I?

            After all, this region is – in climatic terms – a semi-desert. It became an agricultural oasis only because early settlers tapped the streams high up in the surrounding hills.

            They couldn’t pump water up from the lake, because they didn’t have the power to do it. So they trapped the water before it got to the lake. They cooperated to build dams and storage ponds. They engineered miles of flumes and pipelines to carry that precious water to their farms and orchards on the terraces and benchlands left behind by receding glacial lakes. They turned an arid valley into lush agricultural land.

“Is a puzzlement…”

            Yet we have a paradox. We have too much water in the lake. And we have watering restrictions. Residential irrigation systems are limited to alternate days only.

            Water use is further restricted by water metering.

            During most of the year, my house and lot consume about $50 worth of water a month. During the dry months, keeping my lawn as green as Ireland can send my water bill shooting up to over $300 a month.

            I don’t want to pay that much.

            Don’t get me wrong. As the population of the Okanagan Valley soars, we need water controls. We need to pay for the infrastructures that provide water – pure, clean, safe, drinkable water. And we have a moral and legal obligation to the communities downriver from Okanagan Lake not to drown them during high water levels, or to leave them parched during low water levels.

            But it still seems incongruous somehow.

            For a variety of reasons, the valley has too much water. And I have too little. My lawn is going brown.

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

You didn’t get a Sharp Edges column last Monday, because I wasn’t able to send it out. An over-tall moving truck came down our lane and ripped out the overhead lines that connect my house, and my computer, to the internet. For four agonizing days, I had to go cold turkey on electronic communications!

            Because there was no e-mailing of last Monday’s column, there are no responses from you that I can pass along.

            If you do want to pursue that missing column, or any other columns you may have missed, you can find it on my website, http://quixotic.ca.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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                  My webpage is up and running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

                  I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

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PROMOTION STUFF…

                  Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

                  Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

                  Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net