Waterblogged

Whenever we’ve written It’s a drought, stupid!, we’ve thought of Governor Sonny Perdue.

We’re not, we hasten to add, saying that Perdue is stupid. We don’t know for sure. It’s just that he instantly comes to mind when we write It’s a drought, stupid!. Maybe it’s because of his Take a Shorter Shower month (shorter shower instructions here); maybe it’s because he recently convened a prayer group to pray for rain (and here).

Both of these examples seem stupid on the face of it, but may turn out to be sheer genius upon closer examination (As the linked article notes, there was a small amount of unforecasted rain after the prayers!). (Waterblogged.info’s previous post on the power of precipitative prayer here)

For a short time, Perdue’s place as the Waterblogged.info default icon of water-related stupidity was usurped by fellow Georgian, Chris G. Carlos, a wealthy Atlantan who until very recently had been using 60 times the amount of water as his neighbors!

We’ve seen wildly varying estimates of Carlos’s metered usage ranging from 160,000–490,000 gallons per month! There also seems to be some controversy about the number of toilets being flushed in his 14,000 square foot mansion (see photo)—there may be seven, there may be nine—but one thing is not in doubt, everyone in Georgia hates his ass.

Hey, it’s a drought, stupid!, the Waterblogged.info team collectively shouted in self-righteous rage. Didn’t you get the little reminder slip with your water bill? Well, apparently he didn’t, and we’re embarrassed to have leaped to conclusions without having all of the facts. Carlos wasn’t using up to a half a million gallons of water monthly to irrigate his lush four-acre estate because he is a totally self-centered, irresponsible asshole—it was because he’d only recently discovered that there was a severe drought. As soon as he found out, he acted swiftly:

The furor led Mr. Carlos to refer all inquiries to a public relations specialist, Joseph M. A. Ledlie, who said Wednesday that Mr. Carlos had only recently become aware of the severity of the water crisis and was now taking steps to conserve.

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