âIce Bucket Challengeâ Becomes Banned In Missouri; You Wonât Believe The Reason Why
The âIce Bucket Challenge,â a viral-video ploy to raise awareness for ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrigâs Disease, has recently popped up all across the internet, promptingÂ everyone toÂ challenge their friends to dump ice water over their heads in lieu of, or in addition to, donating to the research to cure the deadly disease. Around the Missouri border it has gone viral at an exponential pace, prompting action fromÂ the city council.âThese people are dumping buckets of ice water on their heads, wasting millions of gallons per day,â Says Sly James, the Mayor of Kansas City. âIt was great at first because donations were pouring in to local chapters for research on ALS, but after the first couple of days panic ensued for us representatives.âJamesÂ is referring to a serious environmental problem faced by the city in the last few weeks. Â âPeople are dumping five gallon buckets, 10 gallon buckets, and heck, even bucket loaders full of water on themselves, which would all be well and good, if we werenât in the middle of a drought,â says Meteorologist Katie Horner. Â âWe are experiencing one of the worstÂ droughts in years, and wasting all this water when the whole point was to get people donating to a charity is asinine.âKansas City alone has lost water due to drought, enough so that more rural portions of the city are going without it, as well as the rest of the city having to ration their water. Â âRestaurants have shut down, people are not allowed to shower, a family of five is only rationed ten gallons of water every other day,â Says James. Â âThese people need to realize that for all the positivity they are spreading by making ALS known, they are also devastating our ecosystem, which in recent years has become extremely fragile. Â There is always two sides to the coin.âWith no sign of stopping, people in Missouri have decided to stop using the tap and have gone to lakes and rivers to get their water, with equal detriment to the environment surrounding. Â âIt goes without saying that people in general need to be a part of something,â says anthropologist Robert Layton. Â âIt is unfortunate that in todayâs social age they need to grasp on to internet, to notoriety or fame so much that they refuse to see what they are doing to their home town.ââWe had to put out a bulletin banning the ice bucket challenge,â Says James. Â âWe just canât have people potentially dying for no reason other than to get out of donating money to research. Â People should just make videos showing them donating. Â âALS is a big deal, letâs take it out!â and then fork over $10. Thatâs what the challenge wasÂ supposedÂ to be about. Apparently somewhere along the line, people forgot the âdonateâ part, and just started wasting water.âAlthough the âchallengeâ has brought in over $1 million more than the ALS foundation would have normally received by this time in years past, representatives for the foundation say that if people actually donated when they did the challenge, theyâd have much more.âOriginally the challenge was someone nominates you, and you have 24 hours to either complete the challenge AND donate $10, or you would not complete the challenge at all, and you had to donate $100,â said Marsha Farmington, representative for the ALS foundation. âYes, weâve had people donate. Yes, weâve had people donate more than $100, even. But I have to say, based on how many videos I see in my Facebook feed every day of people dumping buckets over their head, most people who do the challenge remember to film it, they remember to tag friends, and they remember to post it on the internet. The thing they forget is to donate the $10.âÂ