Gulp! Water-Wise, Do-Or-Dry Law Is Hard to Swallow

It’s a world gone mad.

Neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, gramps against granny, rich-executive-with- cloak-of-respectability against mistress-who-believes-he-really- loves-her.

This will be the Kalifornia of the ‘90s, with ordinary people turned into heartless, conniving beasts willing to prey on anyone who tries to get a thimbleful of water away from them.

It won’t be pretty--revolution never is.

Reports already are filtering in from Sacramento, reports of men with baggy pants and suspenders and tiny mustaches, all smoking cigars and meeting in the back booths of Denny’s restaurants and speaking in hushed tones.

At first, the reports seemed too unbelievable to be true. But the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Just remember what desperate times these are. You saw what happened in “Chinatown,” and that was just a movie.

The mustachioed men at Denny’s are in charge of water planning for the State of Kalifornia, and they know that people like you can’t be trusted to conserve water. They’ve seen your automatic sprinkler system watering your neighbor’s sidewalk at 3 in the morning, and that torques their shorts big-time. That’s why they’re hatching plans (probably even this very minute) which are guaranteed to keep you in line and secure the future of the State.

Already, they have pieced together new water policy to be overseen by the Water Resource Investigation and Notification Guard (WRING). This will be an elite corps of people who flunked out of the L.A. Police Academy, and it will have primary responsibility for enforcement of the water-use regulations. These people will carry guns and be fully vested in the state pension program.

With WRING as their muscle, the water planners are also drawing up guidelines for water use in this Dry New World that faces us all.

Here are some of the milder proposals:

* Flushing of toilets in residences will be allowed on a reservations-only basis. You will notify WRING (there will be offices in every community) of when you’ll need to flush the toilet, and assuming you haven’t violated the maximum number of AFPMs (Allowable Flushes Per Month), permission will be granted. You must call up at least 24 hours in advance.

* Flushing in restrooms of service stations, convenience stores and public libraries will remain as it is now--once a month.

* Lawn watering will be done by hand. Pamphlets providing instruction on the most efficient method of cupping your hands and tossing water on the affected area (a method perfected by the nomadic Asian tribes of the early 9th Century) will be available at supermarkets.

* All lawn sprinklers must be turned in to a central repository within 30 days, where they will be converted into sculpture exhibits.

* Water for the brushing of teeth will be banned. Instead, lozenges in a variety of fresh mint flavors will be distributed by the public schools.

* WRING will retrofit all showers with devices that will limit the length of showers to 55 seconds. Going beyond that limitation will set off a loud alarm resembling the baying of hounds and which can be heard within a three-block radius.

* Water for laundry and dishes will still be considered essential, but not as separate operations. Those functions will be combined into a handy one-step clean-and-wash, in which the silverware and dinner plates will be cleaned with linens and whites, while pots and pans must be cleaned with outer wear.

* Incentives in the form of direct cash outlays and free vacations will be available to citizens who turn in water-use violators. Persons who turn in members of their own families will be eligible at the end of every month for grand prize drawings worth thousands of dollars. Winners will be announced on television during the 11 o’clock news.

* To impress upon the public the severity of the crisis, violators will be summarily punished. First-time offenders will be required to wear T-shirts over their regular clothing with the insignia “I’m Too Selfish to Conserve.” Repeat offenders will be hauled into headquarters and struck repeatedly with hosing of a material not yet decided upon. Bidding on the type of hosing will be solicited from all licensed manufacturers, with the only formal specification spelled out at this point that “it hurt” when applied.

The program will be set up within the next 60 to 90 days, under a little-known section of state government that allows mustachioed men with yellow legal pads to institute “emergency measures” in times of crisis.

I hope this doesn’t alarm you. I just thought you’d like to know.

Welcome to the drought and have a nice day.