This evening, save water by drinking beer
Why World Water Day is a good excuse to take a dive into some suds.
Photo by Adam Williams
One of America’s many blind spots is the difficulty many other countries have in accessing fresh, safe drinking water. Or are we just starting to figure it out? With Los Angeles’s ongoing water crisis and the tragedy that is Flint, Michigan, maybe we don’t see water as much of a cheap, plentiful commodity as we used to.
Today is World Water Day, and according to UN-Water, there are 663 million people who lack access to safe drinking water.
What can you do to help?
Why, it’s Richmond! So the obvious answer is drink beer!
If you go down to the Boathouse at Rocketts Landing today between 5:00 and 8:00 PM, you can hang with Governor McAuliffe, the James River Association, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Hardywood crew, and other city and county residents who, like you, do not take your water access for granted.
Hardywood will be slinging their Great Return beer, which celebrates water by…not being water. For every Great Return sold, Hardywood will donate 25 cents to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Save the Bay efforts and 25 to the James River Foundation, and the Boathouse will match it all!
The more you drink, the more you help. And also the more you need a ride home, so please transport yourself responsibly.
Governor McAuliffe is expected make a special announcement or proclamation or something of the sort.
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Susan Howson
Susan Howson is managing editor for this very website. She writes THE BEST bios.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoy beer, especially local, and I support all the groups listed both politically and financially, but we don’t campaign for famine relief with food eating contests. Industry average is 5:1 consumption of water for output of beer according to cnbc and others. The donations and match are about 20% of sales. If the boathouse is packed to capacity, 250 according to visitrichmondva.com, for three hours, and everybody slams a $5 Single every 30 minutes, we’re talking 7.5K in sales, $397 in taxes and $1500 to fight the very real need for clean, safe, affordable drinking water. In the process, they’ll consume 188 gallons of clean water.
We dont even need to look to California or Michigan to understand the need for clean drinking water. While the event istechnically outside the city, Richmond has notoriously high rates of fixed fees for water, effectively a progressive tax on the poor. Richmond also offers discounts to businesses for bulk consumption, aka corporate welfare. Finally, richmond has a sweetheart deal for selling water to the counties, where hardywood is now, below the cost to its own residents.
At least put the donation link up for James River Association and Chesapeske Bay Foundation because we’ll never drink our way to progress, but we might chip in $20 after we’ve had a couple beers.