The American Ditch in Decline

I noted yesterday that the topic of EPA expansion on regulating took another step or two.  Apparently, there's some effort for the EPA to have regulating ability over washes (as you have in Arizona), roadside ditches, and drainage ditches.  We aren't talking on federal property....it's meant for all of the US, period.

So you'd sit there....as a typical Bama guy would....trying to imagine some department in the EPA....governing ditches in Bama.  The commissioner of ditches?  Yeah, it'd be a paid job, with a hottie secretary, forty scientists studying ditches, and probably a thousand administrative guys properly monitoring ditches throughout America.

You'd go once a year to Tallahasse, Florida to attend the ditch-association meeting.....charming environmentalists on ditch knowledge and regulation.  There would be ditch lobbyists there to hand out golf carts, special gifts, and fancy swanky evenings with hired lobbyist-hookers.

The scientists in charge of reviewing ditches in America?  Well....they'd come from upscale university programs at Harvard, Yale, and UCLA.  Naturally.....they'd admit they'd never really seen a real ditch in their life, or pulled a truck out from one, or seen a bunch of copperhead snakes in a typical southern Alabama ditch.

The dry wash commissioner?  Well....there's not much to say or do....for ten months out of the year.  Usually in July and August....dry washes become a hot activity, with monsoon storms arriving and flooding areas with the dry washes.  So you'd have plenty of time to talk politics in DC, swap bar-b-q recipes, talk with trampy Baltimore women, and sip straight rum in the afternoons at the office while watching baseball games.

Fifty years ago....if you had suggested that some government agency would eventually want to take over your ditch business in rural America....folks would have laughed you out of the room.  Today?  It's not a joke.

There are four million miles of roads in America...more or less.  So you can figure at least five to eight million miles of ditches in America.  You'd have to hire a bunch of college kids and do a large database.....to show various grades of ditches.  Yeah, it's a full-time job for some unemployed college kids....just to count ditches.

Permission to place a ditch, or perhaps do maintenance on a ditch? Coming from Washington DC?  Is that really necessary?

You can imagine some type of accreditation coming out of this....meaning you have to be an official ditch-digger, with some type of degree or background.....to even dig a ditch.  Just showing up with a shovel and pick....won't cut it.  You'd have to be special....to dig a ditch.

Only in America.