The mayor cut a purple ribbon that was inconveniently draped across the front door of the reclaimed water tower on 51st Street a few days ago, and I went along for the ride, and to play with my camera and tripod. Act like you should be there, muscle to the front of the crowd and see what photos and video you can get. And try not to walk in front of the News 8 or K-View cameras too many times.
Some disinterested too-cool-for-school blokes in jeans showed up to a piece of recently sodded lawn underneath a big inverted phallus on a Tuesday afternoon and set up video cameras and tripods to record some other blokes in suits talking about said phallus. A very seasoned PR person walked up to me and introduced herself . The most pertinent thing I could think of to say to her eager attentive face as she reached out her hand was that I lived back there.
Neatly assessing that I was of no practical importance, she gave me a little speech about taking a tour later and pounced on the next arrival. I’ve lived in the US for 6.5 years and still can’t get used to strangers walking up to me and introducing themselves to me. My flesh was pressed, my arm pumped, and I felt like a long-abandoned engine being kick-started. I didn’t roar into life like an old Toyota, I spluttered and flat-lined like a poorly maintained Saturn used for short trips in a cold climate.
Suddenly a black Chevy Tahoe with illegally dark windows pulled up and after some speed-pumping and pressing, the place started to buzz. A n inordinately large man in a black suit with extremely slicked back hair introduced himself to me, trying to figure out if I was an assassin with a handgun in my camera, and after my flat-line response, he moved on. I was no threat. It was showtime.
A suited man explained quietly into the wind how many people there were to thank and introduced the mayor who showed his seasoned podium skills by turning on the microphone. Now the people stood behind the bored-looking people in jeans and their tripods could hear what he was saying, which amounted to the fact that Austin has all the water it needs for the next century, but we’re doing this for the people downstream and for something to do with farmers and ecology.
Reclaimed water gets sold cheaply to UT and a few commercial customers. The city paid maybe $8m dollars for the inverted wang. There was a $13m design which turned out to be too much to sell cut-price water to some of the city’s pals (let’s face it we’re not going to give $8m to “downstream farmers” unless they’re making corn, fueling diabetes and keeping all the doctors employed). Maybe this design had an extra testicle. I wouldn’t pay an extra $5m for a second nut, but then I’m no Lance Armstrong.
Get this. All the water is allegedly in the half-nut at the top of the shaft. After the speeches, I went inside the column and aside from one big valve and a few boxes with flashing lights, it’s empty! The wizard behind the curtain is just a platform and a few ropes for when James Bond has to chase some henchmen up and down it. And maybe there’ isn’t really any water there at all! Seriously. I didn’t see a drop the whole time I was there.
If Texas water is the new black gold (blue is the new black in some kind of bruise progression scheme) then Texas needs a Fort Knox. Hard to break in if it’s 200 feet in the air, unless you’re James Bond, or perhaps a henchman. Or you’ve got one of those really big helicopters.
Have you ever seen those giant blades heading down I35 on the back of trucks? Wind farms – I don’t think so. Giant helicopters are being constructed by some mastermind hell-bent on stealing all the wet balls on stilts dotted around the countryside when the global warming shit hits the climate fan.
So if there’s no gold gold in Fort Knox, there may well be no blue gold in the half eaten two-tone Mueller toffee apple. That’s my theory. And I once took apart a Saab with someone who went on to produce Alex Jone’s TV shows, so I should know.
A council member got up to talk about how much her husband liked to water their lawn and was not pleased with the water restrictions. She was happy about the water. I was a little unhappy about her lawn. If TCAD is telling me what I think it’s telling me, her husband has 0.74 acres of yard to water. Heck. If he xeriscaped, maybe we wouldn’t need the restrictions..
The best part was after the ribbon was cut – we got to go be henchmen for a while – see the vast open space in the tower, and see a small meter which showed a gradually increasing number. For all we know that monotonically increasing counter could be an n-th grade science project, unrelated to the supposed water flowing through the pipes.
I have to admit it’s a handsome tower to me, it’s moistened tip kissing the earth, visible from miles around. The designer explained you could orient yourself by the pattern, though I couldn’t quite figure that part out as I was busy wrestling my tripod, which felt small and inferior in the face of such a huge monument to male genitalia.
I’m glad I went – I got to go inside it. The video I shot of the Mueller Water Tower opening was dull. Not enough henchmen shooting people on steel staircases.
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