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Date:               June 2, 2015

         ****** PRESS RELEASE ******
Those who followed my recent mayoral campaign and especially those who have read my recent book, Wilkes-Barre PA: Return to Glory, know that I believe in dreaming about solutions to problems; forming realistic ideas from dreams; creating accomplishable plans from ideas; and finally executing plans that will deliver the desired results. As a self-described problem solver, that is my approach. Solutions do not merely appear on the horizon or on Twitter or Facebook. They are part of a problem solving process.

What prompts me to write this essay is...
that it has rained for the last three days and still the weather forecasters suggest we need a lot more steady rain to make up for our dry Spring.  As of today, Tuesday, with a sky raining rain since Sunday, I have had  enough. But, what if it doesn't rain again for a year or two in NEPA? Weather and rain are unpredictable. Formerly drought stricken Houston, Texas for example, is now suffering from floods.

Somehow, with substantially less supply than our global water supply, there is no drought of oil or gas or energy. Whether it is domestically produced or brought in on huge tankers across oceans, when we go to the gas station as ana example, it is there. When we turn on our heat or AC, it is there. Somehow we are finding more sources of energy and we have never yet run out of energy. Eventually this energy, regardless of its source, is pumped via a huge network of pipelines to cities all across our nation.

With mounting populations, maintaining a reliable supply of drinking water and water for irrigation to all areas of our country is far more problematic than getting energy where it is needed. We see more and more over-tapped rivers, extended droughts, severely damaged aquatic ecosystems, and the likelihood of future impacts from a weather system that is persistently fickle.

How can water managers locate reliable water supplies in the future? Well, we know for sure that it will not be by wishing and hoping. Problem solvers in the US and other countries are already dreaming about a growing number of options for long-distance water supply pipelines. Right now there is no national plan but some of the projects that are already in place in the US are extremely large in scale and would stretch for as much as hundreds of miles,

Meanwhile coastal communities such as San Diego California, have noticed that most of the earth is filled with water, but the water is loaded with salt, thereby making it unusable for irrigation and for drinking water. Moreover, water is not always close-by.  San Diego, close to the Pacific Ocean as a water source is not waiting around. It is thinking out of the box. They have a $1 billion project in play that will provide 50 million gallons of drinking water a day for San Diego County when it opens in 2016. That means that Saudi Arabia is not the only place on earth in which desalinization plants can be built at a huge scale. Perhaps it is time the US looked to assure its future national water supply.

Let me jump to the future say, fifty years from now. If the US were to look at water as a necessary controllable resource, we might consider building ten, twenty, fifty, several hundred or several thousand desalinization plants over this time depending on our drinking and irrigation needs. With a well-designed computer-based water pipeline system in place, we would not have to build all of the desalinization plants right on the coast, and yet we could deliver water anywhere.

If we did not want the plants on the coast, salt water could be pumped inland and converted to potable water in say, Pennsylvania, and shipped wherever it is needed by a vast array of to-be-built water pipelines. With all the water in the world, no city or farm in the US should ever be without water in the future.

Add some technology to the mix and think of the possibilities. Where will the next drought strike? Where will the next flood occur? With a national water storage and delivery system, national and state water managers could take fresh water from where it is plentiful along with water from desalinization resources, and water captured during periods of flooding. This water could then be automatically channeled to parts of the country immediately when needed. 

My point is that in almost all situations in which there is a problem, including national droughts, God has provided a solution. Small thinkers will never see the ready solutions God has provided. Big thinkers are needed. Problem solvers, who as they say, think out of the box, will anticipate problems before they ever occur and they will design solutions that at first may even seem crazy. Perhaps a national water delivery system in the US is a far-fetched idea. Perhaps it is not. Now that we have a general idea on how to solve this one, however, let's talk about our next problem. We may be just a few dreams, ideas, plans, and actions away from a solution.


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Who is Brian Kelly?

Brian Kelly is a former IBM Senior Systems Engineer and college professor. Kelly ran for office recently so that Wilkes-Barre could have a Mayor from outside the current political system. Kelly’s campaign platform included making the city more open and friendly to business and making Wilkes-Barre a safe, affordable and clean city. Brian Kelly and his many ideas for a better city were soundly defeated on May 19, 2015.