Not Sure on This One..

In my Twitter stream a few days back came the following tweet from a normally level-headed, thoughtful, very locally-involved person who farms and ranches:

Day spent with water issues. I am sick and tired of the over reach of government.

My immediate take was he's expressing his displeasure over some Federal involvement in his state's water issues - like EPA perhaps.  But as I contemplated this tweet over the passing days, I became more and more miffed, for you see, I'm beginning to think that maybe his angst was aimed at his local governance, which of course, would be me (actually the board of directors I work for) if he were in NW Kansas.  Of course in Twitter you don't get the chance to attach much detail to your thought-quips, so I can't really say if he was consternated over a particular issue, or a particular level of government, or what exactly spurnned the remark.  But it still concerns me a bit, for if he's expressing this line of thinking, what are the less involved, less level-headed folks thinking?

GMD 4 is a local, political subdivision of the State of Kansas.  We were formed, only after public election, to assume the responsibilities of groundwater management, within the Legislative framework spelled out in our enabling legislation, and only after specific and measureable problems arose.  That direction requires us to address groundwater issues of quantity and quality, and more importantly, allows us to do so from the decidedly local perspective of the people closest to those issues.  It does not retain the locals' ability to continue making the problem(s) worse.

With all due respect to this tweeter, it appears to us that had he and his local water users appropriately addressed the water issues on their own, there would have been no need for any government to take any action - and certainly not over reach.  And unfortunately, this logic applies all the way through government.  If our water users had the foresight and will to stop development when they should have, GMD 4 would not have been needed.  If GMD 4 takes care of these issues, there would be no need for the state of Kansas to step in.  And if Kansas gets with the program, the Federal government will have no business here.

And maybe this is exactly what he was intending to say - Twitter expressed tweet or not..