In the wake of a President Bush veto of legislation to provide $23 billion for water projects across the country, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said he would work to override the veto, according to the Associated Press.   “We are facing a water infrastructure crises, and our national investment in water resources has not kept pace with our level of economic expansion,” said Voinovich.   The Southeast, which is currently experiencing a major drought, is having water problems of their own.   Ad hoc citizens groups, etc., are meeting to look at some of the problems, and solutions.   At one of these groups, a friend of ours, Tom Farmer, who is the Board President for the Coosa River Basin Initiative in Rome, Georgia, said:   “”If only we had such… passion for conservation.”   Mr. Farmer recommended that a Statewide Water Management Plan should be “strong in language, with clear and enforceable rules.”   I couldn’t help but think, is it a “water infrastructure” crisis we’re experiencing nationwide, as Sen. Voinovich postulates?   Or  are we woefully short on what Mr. Farmer in Georgia points out: conservation.   It’s my belief that  it is the latter.   During an interview on the We The People television show in Hibbings, Minnesota, I said our family of five share the same bath water to conserve.   (They used to do that in the old metal washtubs every Saturday night in this country.)   What’s more, we don’t take a bath or shower every day.   We have become so ‘antiseptic’ in this country that we think showering daily is a must.   It isn’t.   Also, our research across the country has intersected us with: people  who collect rainwater in barrels at the bottom of down spouts to water their gardens, etc., people who don’t water their lawns and have learned to live with less than green grass, and dare I say, even: brown spots; people who actually take GI showers; people who use waterless compost toilets; and, (Are you ready for this: “Super Water Saver Woman.”)   No kidding.   The other night at a Bible Study on Halloween night (“costumes optional”), one woman showed up as Super Water Saver Woman, cape, tights, the whole thing.  Among her ‘heroic’ strategies — and there were a number — she saves her shower water and buckets it into the toilet when it needs flushing.   And she doesn’t flush after every pee either.   (That in itself is seven gallons of water per: flush — in less you have a “low flush toilet.”)   Note:   The point to all this is that while millions of people in South America, Africa, Indonesia… search desperately for clean drinking water every day, we’ve become tremendously gluttonous when it comes to consuming water in America.   We should be conserving exponentially (our administration would propose water meters on every home and business) and taking the savings to help these other countries have more wells, sanitation systems, desalinization plants… so they, too, can have safe drinking water.   And it shouldn’t take a drought to get us thinking about conservation.   It should merely take a measure of spiritual principle — focused on social justice for all.