Carolina Journal wrong about Greensboro Water

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(My letter to the Carolina Journal)

Thursday, January 29, 2009 Attention Carolina Journal: Yesterday you received a copy of my email to Woody Yonts, Chairman of the Drought Management Advisory Council of the NC Division of Water Resources about his false assumptions that appeared in your June 2008 story above. It appears that your Associate Editor David N. Bass has made those same false assumptions in his front page story. And I can assure you that the citizens of Greensboro share the same false assumption—that Greensboro water use is "escalating." As you learned in yesterday’s email, water use in Greensboro is in a 15-year decline. On Friday I am planning to run the above story in my blog and I would like to know if you care to comment. Please feel free to phone me at 336-993-6895. You would be doing a service to Greensboro taxpayers and water rate payers if you would cover this story. I gave you a “heads-up” on it about six months ago and it did not attract your attention. I look forward to your call. Mike J Baron 336-993-6895

No Reply from Carolina Journal or Woody Yonts I asked the Carolina Journal (CJ) if it wished to comment about its reporting error and it chose not to reply. Chairman Yonts of the Drought Management Advisory Council did not reply either. He made a false assumption about Greensboro, and we all know what they say about people who assume. Given over a decade of false reporting and very successful Randleman Dam propaganda, it is easy to see why Yonts and the CJ concluded that Greensboro's water use is “escalating." Greensboro’s citizens believe that too, and so does the local media and its journalists. Like Yonts and Bass, they can only be embarrassed now—or perhaps in denial—because they fell for the dam scam, too. Maybe that's why they won't touch this issue with a 10-foot fish pole. The Carolina Journal failed to dig for the facts because it assumned that water use is “escalating” everywhere--including Greensboro. Surely that's why a new dam and reservoir is being built, right? CJ owes its readers a correction because water use in Greensboro is in a 15-year decline (Scroll down to a previous post to find my CHART). Yet CJ led its readers to believe water use is “escalating.” The CJ presented the Randleman Dam and Reservoir as the obvious solution to Greensboro’s water woes. But worse than that, CJ spoke loudly to the entire State of North Carolina encouraging it to do what "smart" Greensboro did—build a new reservoir—when water demand is “escalating.” I am calling on the CJ to print a CORRECTION and inform NC citizens and politicians that Greensboro water use is in a 15-year decline and not "escalating" as its story led them to believe.

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FACT: To date neither the City of Greensboro or any Triad news agency has reported that water use is in a 15-year decline. You will not find my history of Greensboro water use anywhere but here in this blog. That's because there is a cover-up. Please direct others to this story about how the public and the feds were hoodwinked into building an unnecessary dam and reservoir. Simply tell them to Google two words -dam scam-.

Google dam scam