Atlanta as a green city?

Forcing people to change behavior is fascism. Encouraging them with cash (link here) is plain ol' common sense. Here's to hoping Atlanta's next mayoral race will provoke debate and action on rebates and cash incentives for residents to embrace everything from rain harvesting to lo-flow appliances. Like politics, conservation is ultimately a local issue.

Water conservation: Patriotic duty?

North Carolina Governor Mike Easley has seen water use in his state reduced by 30 percent, and then slip steadily up again even as the drought gets worse.

In an address yesterday , Easley hammered a favorite theme: Water conservation as patriotic duty.

But he went further, calling on public utilities to tier their billing so as to make water more expensive for the biggest users.

He also reinvogorated his shame game by vowing to simplify a website that shows each utility's water use to make it simpler to read -- and simpler to identify the systems doing the least to deal with the drought.

Seems to me Easley -- who, by the way, is not terribly comfortable in public -- is showing more leadership on this issue than our own Gov. Perdue, who seems intent on blaming outsiders, not residents, for the state's plight.

With the crisis only growing, it's time for some self-reflection, Carolina-style.

The armchair war

The Georgia-Alabama-Florida "water wars" are hardly that.

They're long, drawn-out bureaucratic affairs, with state appointees, business flacks and environmental lawyers hammering out endlessly subclaused legal documents that, in the end, fail to accomplish what needs to be accomplished: depoliticized water decisions based on hard scientific and economic data about what the three states really need from the poor Chattahoochee River.

As Govs. Perdue, Crist and Riley meet right now at the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee to discuss the drought's effect on their hard-fought "compacts" on the river, they should keep in mind that one reason they're in this mess is because the states have lacked the political fortitude since the early '90 droughts to hammer out a long-term plan for this ever-thirsty region.

Yes, they're hard choices: Water use needs to be cut by 50 percent in the next few decades, even as the city grows. Four in 10 Georgians now say the drought is the top issue for the state -- the greatest public focus on a single issue in the history of the Peach State Poll.

Ending the political damming on this issue can only be done by one group: the politicians. That's what leadership is made of.

(Picture: A baptism in the Chattahoochee.)

Dekalb offers 'lo-flow' kits to older homes

Demand is great, so you may have to wait up to two months for delivery, but why not sign up for a free lo-flow kit, courtesy of your Dekalb tax dollars? Each kit contains 1 low-flow showerhead, 2 faucet aerators, 1 flow meter bag, and leak detection tablets.

Another great tip, this one from Mayor Shirley Franklin who says she utilizes it herself: Keep a bucket in the shower to catch the water as you wait for it come to temperature. Then use it to help fill your washing machine next time you need clean socks.