Our Sun and Moon tug upon the loose fabric of our oceans like stretching a ball of dough. The evolution of and on our planet rotates around water. The cycle of precipitation and evaporation has changed the rich lush landscapes of Jurassic images by leaching minerals downstream for millions of years.
Our atmosphere would not function or even exist without the evaporation cycle continuing. Rain speaks all languages. Every living human, flower, animal, fish, fungus, or lizard responds to rain. How we have responded to rainfall is evident in evolution.
We can never hope to control this planetary cycle. We have evolved, but now we must adapt. We have come a long way from the initial stepwells and cisterns of 5000 years ago. The skill and knowledge in water management from Holland are legendary, but all human construction pales to the destructive forces of nature.
Here in Thailand, rainfall capture is part of the culture. How else would mountain farmers flood rice paddies and irrigate farms? How could anyone have the occasional bucket bath without water captured from vinyl roof sheets and a massive clay vase or pot?
I don’t know about you, but I rather like the individual freshwater cistern on each property. This mitigates public water department infrastructure and ongoing costs. We end up spending more on our properties, but I’d rather that than more taxes.
There is considerable flooding in some cities during various rainy seasons. There are several key contributing factors to this apparent lack of fluid-dynamics understanding in such a historically rain-soaked land.
- When it rains, it pours. I have seen excess of 100mm per hour of local rainfall. There is no metropolitan city in the world that can handle that type of deluge. It is cost-prohibitive beyond imagination to engineer and build a system that could.
- Any urban sewage department will tell you dealing with fat and congealed oil is the farthest-reaching, most difficult problem they deal with. It is entirely preventable through personal responsibility to not wash oils down any drain. Collect oily water for separation. Later you can sell the oil for some cost mitigation.
- Businesses and homeowners regularly tap into public storm systems, disposing of black waste into grey systems illegally. Government Ministries and Service Departments spend considerable tax money softening the environmental impacts of poor civic responsibility.
- Like the other roadblocks to easy water management, trash control is entirely in human hands. Or should I say out of human hands? The level of contempt for the environment by many people in Thailand is evident in roadside ditches, irrigation canals, rivers, lakes, and oceans being extensively polluted via personal laziness and lack of enforcement of laws intended to deter the disgusting habit of littering.
The government has a lot of water to manage. Do your part to create fewer problems for yourself, help foster more efficient use of tax money, and enjoy clean, fresh water as nature intended.
