Good Clean Water Needs to Be Protected

In a poem entitled Mass for the Rivers Ian McDonald says: 

It is not your fault you mix with everything

You pick up whatever you flow through

Everything the rain catches coming down

Everything tiny silvery streaks of droplets soak from the ground and bring to your banks in quick rivulets.

It is not your fault you mix with everything

Becoming more and less than yourself mile by mile.

Solvents from the factory

Tailings from the mine

Fertilizer from the field

Shit from the feedlot

Waste from the leaking tanks the army base left behind

Sewage from the city’s raw flush.

You take it all in; it changes you.  And it is not your fault. 

You bead on my sun-blocked arm,

My paddle cuts into your brown flowing current,

Tiny condoms float by, bobbing up and down in the waves without apology.

But it is not your fault. 

Safe clean drinking water was something we took for granted as children.  We turned on the sprinkler and ran through it without any thought of conservation. We delighted in the minnows that swam in tiny creeks alongside the road. Those tiny creeks and minnows are not there any more.

One day I hiked into a spot on a river that feeds Lake Cowichan.  The person I was with had hiked into that spot before.  In his previous trip there were fish fry everywhere.  We saw one or two.  The change was related to poor forestry practices.  Instead of the gravel that fish need for spawning the river was full of boulders that had been washed into it because of clear cutting.  In the spring and fall there is the sound of bowling balls as the rocks washed into the river from clear cutting bang against one another on their way further down river.   Clear cutting has meant that many of the rivers that used to run all year now go dry in the summer.

There was the day when I saw two well-dressed respectable looking senior ladies open the trunk of their car and take out garbage to dump in the Fraser River.  A lot of people dump their garbage in the river as the clean-up society can tell you. 

I also have a story from the ocean. We went fishing one day and there were lots of fish. Over night a tanker purged its bilge and the next day there were no fish to be found. We went for miles and in every direction we looked there was oil floating on the surface.  One of the reasons I do not support increased tanker traffic carrying bitumen to China is I know that this will happen again and again and again.   

How long can we keep doing these things and not put ourselves at risk?  I know lots of people who say don’t worry about the earth because it has an amazing ability to heal itself.  That feels like we are playing a dangerous game with our very lives.  We don’t know how much is too much. We won’t know until it is too late. 

People treat water as an expendable resource that does not need to be cherished and valued.  Yet water is our most valuable resource.  More important that the gas we pump it into the ground to bring to the surface.  Without water no life is possible.  Without it the human body cannot last long. 

Water refreshes us.  It renews us.  It is an essential component of healing.   It cleanses us.  It is a metaphor for a healthy and life-giving spirituality.  Water is something we need every day.  Life demands it.  So care for the earth and its waters. And take a moment to think about the spiritual water you need to refresh and restore you soul.