We acknowledge beginning the second month since the Town of Farmville terminated negotiations with Prince Edward County over a proposed regional water authority. It is difficult to shake the uneasy feeling that a crucial opportunity is passing that should not be allowed to pass. Perhaps the Town will, after all, successfully create a water authority-with an important seat for the County-that constructs the needed pipeline from the Sandy River Reservoir.

If not, a variety of strategies suggest themselves. But if all else fails why not take a cue from the “Occupy Movement” and Occupy The Sandy River Reservoir? With Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College right here there should be more than a few willing to enlist, bringing their sleeping bags, tents, bullhorns, and 'new media' skills to the banks of the reservoir.

Much as Duke University students create their own tent city, Coach K-ville, to assure themselves of basketball tickets. They could still go to class. With varying class schedules there would always be at least several hundred at the reservoir. Creating our own Occupy Movement here to bring the Town of Farmville and Prince Edward County together as working partners is a temptation that requires no apple and, after all, who really needs a Garden of Eden? We just want a water line from the reservoir to the Town's water treatment plant.

Actually, an Occupy Farmville movement might make more sense. If you got several thousand people living and protesting at the reservoir, well, first, nobody's going to see them so they won't get their point across. And, secondly, without public water and sewer service those thousands of people would be-Yes, of course, they would be just like the Town of Farmville if a devastating drought ever wiped out the Appomattox River and the Town's back-up supplies.

High and dry.

A few hundred, or a thousand, folks living in and about Main Street in an Occupy Farmville movement, however, would quickly revitalize downtown in ways the business community would not, understandably, appreciate. Between the protestors, law enforcement and the media, wow, talk about your streetscaping energy.

And so close to LU classrooms and the dining hall, making it far more convenient for students.

But folks can drive back and forth from Longwood or Hampden-Sydney to the reservoir, and with satellite dishes CNN can broadcast from anywhere, and the students can create their own Internet broadcasts and YouTube footage, so an Occupy The Sandy River Reservoir movement does, after all, make sense if push comes to shove.

Much simpler, of course, if the Town and the County participated together in a water authority that built the needed pipeline from the reservoir.

But could anybody be persuaded to do the simpler, sensible thing?

We will wait and see.

Keep those tents and sleeping bags ready.

-JKW-