You beat me to it, so I posted mine at my place.

Last time I checked, you can’t drink or irrigate agriculture with ocean water.

Also, when did McMansions become a specific cause of drought?

This sounds a little too close to “They shouldn’t have built a city beneath sea level - screw the people of New Orleans”

That being said, if we’re going to give away land to another state, can’t it be Memphis?

I kid, Memphians, I kid.

Last time I checked, you can’t drink or irrigate agriculture with ocean water.

But you can if you take the salt out. When I was in the Navy, the only way to get fresh water for drinking and bathing was by running salt water trough evaporators.

But you can if you take the salt out. When I was in the Navy, the only way to get fresh water for drinking and bathing was by running salt water trough evaporators.

Which is not practical or economical in the large-scale.

Jim–sorry about that. If you were unemployed like me, you could get your posts in earlier.

Sar–what Jim said. And those McMansions have huge lawns and ce-ment ponds. And folks complaining about their expensive landscaping dying (I’m complaining now, but didn’t during the summer–such is life and all that).

Slarti–I see your point, but it’s not the same. And I’m not saying “screw the people of Georgia”; I’m saying, “you snooze, you lose.” We had a drought, too. If they take that water, then people in our state will suffer. And my argument is that we deserve it because: we’ve taken responsibility for that land for 200 years and we manage those resources better than they do. Perhaps they would like to purchase some water from us instead of just taking it?

Most McMansions are built on smaller lots than, say, the ranch houses of the sixties and seventies.

Compare the lot sizes in West Meade or Crieve Hall where most folks have an acre and a thirty year old house to the lot sizes in the The Governors Club. Developers make more money putting two or three houses on an acre than one house on an acre. You’ll notice no new neighborhoods, either in Atlanta, or in our local version, Williamson County, promising more than a half an acre per lot. Nationwide the trend is for more home square footage and less yard.

You can certainly bring up unrestrained growth, poor planning and overbuilding in ALL building sectors as being prime factors in Atlanta’s problems, but to use “McMansions” as a hot button word doesn’t, pardon the phrase, hold water.

Sar, you make a good point. But the footage I was seeing from Georgia this summer was all people outside their new McMansions with their new landscaping that needs more water than established landscaping. It’s more the volume of the McMansions than the buildings themselves, for sure.

Well, if you saw it on teevee, it must be true.

Atlanta has been running out of water for twenty years. The Lake Lanier was down six feet when I was in high school. The politicians of Georgia have deliberately chose to ignore this particular problem until it was able to swim up and bite them on the ass.

Except, that without water, it can’t really swim.

Sar–the teevee never lies, right?

Frankly, I feel that this whole thing is coming up because Georgia legislators aren’t really doing what they need to do to address the issue. It’s a red herring. “We don’t have water because those mean ol’ Tennesseeans won’t let us have our land!” instead of addressing many years worth of logistical issues. Then again, that’s what politicians do.

why can’t they just buy water from us?

Why buy what you can steal?

I think the relationship to a Mcmansion is that bigger houses also require mmore plantings to reach around that bigger footprint. It’s not the size of the yard, it’s the number of bushes aropund the bigger foundation.

Oh, and Lesley, I’ve been unemployed twice before. I prefer employed. You beat me fair and square.

A McMansion footprint is generally no bigger than a 1960’s Ranch house. It just has more levels.