As Drought Intensifies, Towns and Schools Worry About Maintaining Athletic Fields - NYTimes.com
So they have the worst drought ever in Texas, and folks are worried about the football fields.
Kate Galbraith via Texas Tribune
Across Texas, as one of the worst droughts in history intensifies, numerous cities and towns have instituted water restrictions. Earlier this week, the federal Department of Agriculture designated most of the state a natural-disaster area, allowing farmers and ranchers statewide to apply for emergency low-interest loans.
A notable if lesser worry is the condition of athletic fields. Too much dirt creates safety concerns, and some fields are getting patchy. Worse, a summer of 90- to 100-degree temperatures and tightening restrictions on sprinklers lies ahead — not to mention that players will begin trampling the fields in August, when practices start.
“The extreme heat and no rain is burning up our fields,” James W. Riggen, a maintenance official with the Midland Independent School District, said in an e-mail.
[…]
In Llano, if the football practice fields cannot get the estimated 54,000 gallons of water that they need each week, the community may feel the effect. That’s because practice would move to the game field, which is watered by a working well. But heavy use could make that field unsuitable for games, so Llano might have to play its entire schedule at opponents’ homes, hurting morale — and the local economy.
“A lot of folks come to the ball game,” Mr. Hill said, “and they buy some gas and eat dinner.”
I can’t even begin: so many layers of what’s wrong here.
Just remember that this drought — stretching across the entire southwest and northern Mexico is permanent. There will be no return to normal. So maybe it doesn’t matter if Texas pours out the last remaining gallons of water trying to maintain their ball fields. They are only hastening a return to subsistence, where the people that don’t emigrate out of this desert region will have to exist based on the water that comes every year from the sky, because the aquifers are all played out.
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website666 reblogged this from underpaidgenius and added:
often brilliant underpaidgenius:...We are so rock stupid. It’s going to be a good 666cast...
- thepete said: #facepalm
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