Was that Snow at Christmasville?

This is a good question, and I asked the city's Christmasville guru, Candy Randall, about it this week. City Hall did get a few questions about the origin of the snow.

Turns out it was trucked in by a company out of Florida. It arrived in blocks of ice, which were then put into a machine to create the snow.

I'll have a Christmasville "post-mortem" in Sunday's paper.

To simply say it did not come from the Catawba, so therefore, it is OK.

I just checked the State of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection's web site and it appears that most of Florida is still in a moderate to severe drought. Let's ask the folks down there if they mind conserving their water so that we can have fake snow.

Come on, Matt, now's your time to show us your reporting mettle. Let's see an article that really gets beneath the surface of the pagentry of Christmasville. Let's face facts, there are a lot of powerful people in town that are involved in this. Do you have what it takes to report the truth?

Again, the question was asked - how much water was used to produce the snow? It does not matter whether it came from the Catawba or not. Who is paying for all of this? Check the City budget and find out how much tax payer money went to support Christmasville - not only as a direct line item, but also in terms of additional police, safety, etc...

At worst, this showed a tremendous lack of judgement to produce snow in Rock Hill during one of the most severe droughts we've had - regardless of where the water came from.

I look forward to your article on Sunday - hope it is not as full of fluff as the snow was.

Well thanks Hood, for taking up the cause.

Like you, I found the whole snow thing insulting and irresponsible. You have asked some hard-ball questions, lets see if they will give either of us an answer that makes any sort of sense.

Between you and me, we probably should not hold our collective breath and the best we can hope for is thatmaybe next year they will forgo the snow as a TOTAL WASTE OF WATER.

You raise legitimate questions. Especially given the city's strong words lately about the need to conserve.

The other thing Randall told me is that she ordered and paid for the ice several months ago, before the drought reached its current level of severity.

I've already written the Christmasville story but I'll see what more I can find out about Snow-gate.

Sounds like you're getting a snow job - pun intended.

Ask her when the order was placed. I am confident we were at a level enough of drought that this should have raised questions. Why order from Florida? We have ice makers right here in Rock Hill. Why not support our local merchants?

They're going to try to skirt around this just like they did the jaywalking thing, but at the end of the day, they still have egg (or snow) on their face.

I think Karl Rove knew about the snow.