Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/774378
6 UCW JANUARY 18-24, 2017 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM OPINION It's the Storm Water, Stupid by DR. LEONARD BULL As a member of the Cape Fear River Assembly Board with lifelong involvement in agriculture, the land and water, the title of this little piece is very important to me. Matthew visited us in October 2016. It was preceded about a week by heavy ground-saturating rain. The damaging wind came and went in about a day or so, but we are still dealing with the impacts of storm water from the combination of events. Hurricane Floyd came in 1999 with less damaging wind inland but an almost identical pattern of preceding rainfall and huge combined storm water damage. Some places such as Princeville and parts of Lumberton may never return after those two mostly storm water events. We often talk about 100 year or 500 year storms, or 100-year 24-hour rainfall events, etc., without quantification of either. A 100-year rain event is one that is 1 percent likely to happen during any year (once every 100 years). There is no set amount of rain to qualify. It means nothing! So, what did we learn? Apparently not enough! In Fayetteville, are there not some residential areas that were built in what could be or should be considered "flood plains," (or maybe not even considered?) and thus suffered major damage? Or areas such as Rayconda, which watched its access road disappear with the dam that washed out because of lack of planning for storm water management from paved areas at the new VA hospital site? And there is to be more development in the VA area that will make the problem worse. And there are more examples. I was much involved in the aftermath of Floyd and its impact on agriculture in eastern N.C. and saw recurrences of that again with Matthew. It took me back to my hometown of Westfield, Mass., when we had 18.3 inches of rain on August 20, 1955, as a result of hurricane Diane. There was virtually NO wind damage but a devastating impact of storm water. I saw it up close and personal. Westfield did not have a storm water plan, but they do now! There is rumor of either the existence of a (soon to be released?) storm water plan for Fayetteville. And there may well one somewhere. But how many residents have seen it? And how much public input was there in its development? And if there is one, how often is it used in making siting location decisions for developing or paving a plot of open space? Is the plan current if it exists? I hope that the answers to these questions are all affirmative. But it is not apparent to me that they are. Maybe it is time to have a serious public discussion about storm water and how it is currently managed, how it is intended to be managed into the future, as well as how it is to impact future development. Do we need to wait for the new baseball stadium to become a big splash pad during baseball season before there is an effective storm water management plan for Fayetteville? A lot of people in Fayetteville do not think so. You Are in the Trump Zone by PITT DICKEY There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as a giant toupee and as timeless as yesterday's tweet. It is the middle ground between outright lies and mere fabrication, between pseudo-science and superstition. It lies between the pit of Democrats' fears and the summit of the Tea Party's wildest hopes. You unlock this door with a computer key provided by Vladimir Putin. You are moving into a land of both shadow and innuendo. This is the dimension of attention-deficit- disorder-based-presidential actions. You have just crossed over into the Trump Zone on Jan. 20. America's pundits and media can't understand what has happened or is about to happen. The Talking Heads continually rail about Trump's inconsistent statements. Build the wall. Mexico will pay for it. No, we will pay for the wall. Mexico will reimburse us. The check will be in the mail. Lock her up. No, leave her alone, I don't want to hurt her. Repeal Obamacare. Keep pieces of Obamacare. Take a phone call from Taiwan's president. Tweet insults at China. Tweet insults at Saturday Night Live and Meryl Streep. It's all the same. Insult nuclear-armed nations and Hollywood celebs. Tweet 'em all and let my poll numbers sort them out. Let the Democrats suffer from Post Trump Stress Disorder. That's their problem, not The Donald's or his loyal supporters. We're in charge now and you had better get used to it. On the face of it, grumpy sore loser non-Trumpsters claim there is no coherent pattern to what President Trump thinks. Not so. President Trump is America's first zen president. He lives solely in the moment. Be here now. There is no past. There is no future. There is only the now. As George Costanza said, "It's not a lie if you believe it." His tweets are Zen Koans designed to enlighten us. According to no less an authority than Wikipedia, a Koan is "a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment." Trump's seemingly unrelated random thoughts are in fact Trump's recognition that only the zen of Now matters. Yesterday Trump said X. Today Trump says Not-X. This is not a contradiction. It is a Trump Koan and your key to enlightenment. Logical reasoning is inadequate to perceive reality. If you try to use logic to understand Trump's tweets you will be lost in the fog of incoherence. The tweets are not supposed to make sense. They are designed to open your mind to Trump Zen. Get over it, you silly logic-based non-Trumpsters. Now is the post truth and post-logic era. What is the sound of one tweet clapping? As a rule, a president-elect after a close election will try to bring the country together by telling us he will be president of all the people. Not The Donald. Unifying America after a hard-fought election is for sissies. Trump is not a sissy. He is a manly man. If it were not so, would not Putin have told him? Trump thinks much more hugely than just unifying America. Trump's ongoing bromance with Putin is Exhibit A. The 17 US intelligence agencies issued a report that Putin personally ordered a campaign to hack the Democrats to grab their dirty laundry to hurt Hillary's campaign and boost the chances of The Donald. Putin denies any efforts to influence the American presidential election. The Donald sides with Putin against the American intelligence agencies. Some soreheads wonder why an American president would believe Putin instead of his own intelligence agencies. In the brave new world of the Trump Zone, such soreheads who question the thoughts of The Donald are henceforth to be known as either stupid or fools. The Donald wants to unify America and Russia. His recent tweet " Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only 'stupid' people, or fools, would think that is bad." Any dumb Americans who disagree with the thoughts of President Trump are either stupid or a fool. The Donald doesn't need no stinking unity in America. There can be no space for disagreement with the president. The Breitbart reported mysterious FEMA re-educations camps that President Obama never got around to opening could find new life under President Trump to upgrade the knowledge base of the stupid fools who disagree with him. If you are a Democrat, find some Republican friends who will speak up for you when the black helicopters come to haul you away like Mr. Peabody's coal train. Kindly come visit me in Guantanamo. PITT DICKEY. Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200. DR. LEONARD BULL. Member, Cape Fear River Assembly Board.. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200. President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office Jan 20. Following the Aug. 11, rainfall of almost six inches from hurricane Connie, area streams had risen to the top of their banks. On Aug. 18, a second hurricane, Diane, added almost an additional twenty inches of rain over a three day period.