Good Day citizens and welcome to What Would Jefferson do?

Our weekly opportunity to discuss current American events

with President Thomas Jefferson,

who is seated across for me now.

Good day to you, Mr President. Good day to you, Mr. President. Good day to you, Mr President.

Good day to you, Citizen.

Mr. Jefferson, we received an inquiry from Mark Kissinger.

He wants to know about water and the federal government he talks about developing

renewable energy resources using pumped water which technologically may be

a bit beyond your time sir. Indeed it is and let me say that I begin to reject the proposition immediately

when you talk about federal distribution of something like water.

Well he says these systems could be used to pump water from say water surplus watersheds into

deficit watersheds to mitigate potentially damaging long-term droughts. as a farmer yourself sure I I can't

imagine that you would be not in favor of that. I certainly understand the

problem but let me give you an example when I was becoming a young man in

Virginia I noticed that the Ravana River, which went right past my boyhood home at Shadwell, was not suitable for moving grain to the James River and to market.

And so I took a canoe down the Ravana to try to ascertain what its problems were as a navigable stream.

I made a catalog of those and realized that we could make it navigable if we remove some obstructions and so on.

Rather than going to the national government for this or to the British government,

I went to my neighbors and said let's take

up a subscription and let's as volunteers each put in a certain amount of money

so that we can pay for the channelizing or the clearing of the obstructions in the Ravana River.

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