News & Record Editor John Robinson

In 1997 as a whistleblower working inside Greensboro's city hall I began sending News and Record Editor John Robinson shocking news that Greensboro water use was declining! He refused to print it. He said to me, "That’s not news—because with a water conservation program now operating, water use should be declining."

Editor Robinson was spiking the news story that would have destroyed the city's campaign for the unnecessary $150 million dollar Randleman Dam! And I cannot prove this, but I believe Editor Robinson hung up and then called City Manager Ed Kitchen to inform him that Mike Baron was whistleblowing about the decline in water use.

Water use continued to decline several years in a row during a booming economy when record numbers of Greensboro building permits were issued! The City of Greensboro had predicted that water use would skyrocket.

Editor John Robinson joined the dam scam conspiracy and prevented the News and Record's readers from learning that real water use was declining while the City was falsely claiming water use was increasing. Robinson and his daily newspaper had endorsed the dam project and printed numerous stories (city propoganda) about why the Randleman Dam was needed. His newspaper convinced the citizens to support the dam.

Declining water demand was BIG NEWS because had the public known that water use was going DOWN instead of UP, it would have begun to question the need for the controversial Randleman Dam.

15 years have passed and the citizens of Greensboro still don't know that water use (water sales) is lower now than when RanDam was being pitched as the only solution for a city "running out of water."

The News and Record knows that the citizens don't know the facts ....and it still refuses to print them. It sent a reporter to cover my post-termination news conference who was on her last day of work and beginning a new job the following week in Texas. That shows how little interest the daily newspaper had in reporting the truth.

Why didn't the News and Record inform its readers that the City of Greensboro's water sales are lower now than 15 years ago? Why won't the News and Record tell citizens that the City of Greensboro's 1995 projected water needs created to justify RanDam never came true?


Mike J Baron
Greensboro's only water conservation manager
1994 to 1999