We are now scrambling to find additional supplies of water. Among their most immediate measures, they recently requested permission from the state to pump more water for treatment at the Hialeah-Preston plants.

As local strategies for water relief dovetail with the massive regional plans now taking shape, Clemente, more than any other individual, is likely to feel the pressure to produce water that simply isn't available. He knows Metro's previous water bosses never had it so bad, but he's rational about the alternatives. "There's an economic cost to losing the Everglades and there's an economic cost to not losing it," he observes. "There's an awareness that the natural resource out there is too valuable to eliminate." Making that decision is easy enough, but Clemente knows it's a lot harder to determine what comes next. The need to try, however, is more pressing than ever before.

te might save the county from a water crisis is reason enough for public officials to block the Blockbuster project, which he argues would be incompatible with a wellfield.)

Conservation. Metro has implemented nearly all of a six-point conservation plan that would reduce the amount of waste water consumers generate. Each year Dade disp