Dependable Erection

Monday, June 16, 2008

The lost art of copy-editing

From Monica Chen's mostly good Herald-Sun piece* today on the recent heat wave and its implications for our water supply in the months to come:
Experts haven't put out any warnings about another possible drought this year, but the Seewaldt-Dietze family isn't taking any chances. They'll continue as they always have and try to save every drop.

. . .

Although Lake Michie and the Little River Reservoir look full and the county projects 303 days of supply, the streams feeding them are still running about 50-60 percent of normal for this time of year, according to Deputy Water Management Director Vicki Westbrook.

"The groundwater is still in a recovery mode," she said. "That's why no one at any level has pronounced the drought over."

Gov. Mike Easley again last week asked the General Assembly to approve his proposed drought legislation to modernize this state's public water systems and mandate conservation.

As of Thursday, more than two-thirds of the state's 100 counties were still in some level of drought, with 32 counties in extreme drought.

=======================

* I say mostly good, because there are a few annoying, if ultimately irrelevant errors. for example, demand for the month of June 08 is not higher than last June's 33.79 mgd, at least not yet, although it has spiked above that level on several occasions. she also writes "Meanwhile, water use, after hovering mostly below the daily figure of 25 million gallons in May, hit a high of about 36 million gallons on Wednesday, 15 million more than the same time last month," without putting in the context that water restrictions were not in effect last June, and that usage likely spiked on Wednesday precisely because it's one of the days on which residents are allowed to water their gardens. The city does not publish daily water use figures over the weekend. You need to read the daily use chart to get an idea of what those are, and the chart does not always match up to the published figures. So far, they haven't updated the chart to reflect this weekend's use. I suspect that we'll see another spike on Saturday. And if that trend continues for the next couple of weeks, especially if inflows to our reservoirs remain below a combined 10 cubic feet per second (or about 6.6 mgd) we'll see Wednesday watering eliminated in the near future.
UPDATE: graph of recent daily use has been updated. It appears that demand was around 33 mgd on Saturday, third highest day of the month.

Labels: ,

1 Comments:

  • Aw, c'mon Barry, cut the H-S a break. It's hard to run a newspaper when it's never recovered from the shock of firing half the staff on the first day of ownership.

    Besides, if the H-S was run competently, it would interfere with Paxton's grand plan to run every single news outlet it owns into the ground, thus living up to family patriarch William F. Paxton's tradition of losing all his money in terribly-run businesses.

    By Blogger Dan S., at 11:39 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home