They won’t be laughing for long
Water crisis are not a laughing matter… unless you are holding all the cards…
The dispute between Tennessee and Georgia has accelerated – and Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield has taken a leaf out of South-London based comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas. Let me explain.
1996 Yorkshire Water was in a crisis… in March.
For any of you who have not spent a winter or spring in the delightful countryside of this fine county, the thought of a lack of water for whippet bathing is astonishing. After all, it is just over the hills from my home City Manchester, on which it is always, always raining…
Anyway, Mark Thomas delivered a truck of water to the company as “a gift of the Ethiopian people.”
He also wrote a song to accompany the gift called "Don't They Know It's Bath-Time In Rotherham"… which was a parody of the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas.
Taking his queue from events in Yorkshire more than a decade ago, the Chattanooga Mayor turned up in a truck at Georgia’s state capitol building in Atlanta last week. He said it was "Give our Georgia Friends a Drink Day."
Just like Mark Thomas, the move underscored a serious message in a relatively light-hearted way. This is the proclamation issued by Mayor Littlefield:
- WHEREAS, it has come to pass that the heavens are shut up and a drought of Biblical proportions has been visited upon the Southern United States, and
WHEREAS, the parched and dry conditions have weighed heavily upon the State of Georgia and sorely afflicted those who inhabit the Great City of Atlanta, and - WHEREAS, the leaders of Georgia have assembled like the Children of Israel in the desert, grumbled among themselves and have begun to cast longing eyes toward the north, coveting their neighbor’s assets, and
- WHEREAS, the lack of water has led some misguided souls to seek more potent refreshment or for other reasons has resulted in irrational and outrageous actions seeking to move a long established and peaceful boundary, and
- WHEREAS, it is deemed better to light a candle than curse the darkness, and better to offer a cool, wet kiss of friendship rather than face a hot and angry legislator gone mad from thirst, and
- Whereas, it is feared that if today they come for our river, tomorrow they might come for our Jack Daniels or George Dickel,
- NOW THEREFORE, In the interest of brotherly love, peace, friendship, mutual prosperity, citywide self promotion, political grandstanding and all that I Ron Littlefield, Mayor of the City of Chattanooga, Tennessee, do hereby Proclaim that Wednesday, February 27, 2008 shall be known as “Give Our Georgia Friends a Drink Day.”
Both of Georgia's Legislative chambers have passed a resolution claiming that an 1818 survey wrongfully placed Georgia's northern border short of the 35th parallel, and more importantly short of the Tennessee River.
The flow of the Tennessee River is approximately 15 times greater than the Chattahoochee River, which currently serves as metro Atlanta's main source of moving water. Atlanta is a hot place… without water it will die.
So, although I can see the comic value of Mayor Littlewood’s proclamation, I also see portents of doom. This issue that is funny today will not be very funny tomorrow. The future of Atlanta could be in the balance… and it won’t be international terrorism, communism or crime that brings the growth of Atlanta to an end. It will be something as simple as H2O.
