“In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference”
- Rachel Carson
Following on the footsteps of 10-10-10 comes Blog Action Day 10-15-10 sponsored by http://blogactionday.change.org/ I was asked, along with nearly 4,000 other bloggers, among a global audience of 28 million people, to post today and talk about…. WATER!!!!
Here in the Northwest, where we get more rain then anywhere else in the country, hydro energy powers our industry and homes. We can boast about the Columbia River basin, which at its mouth in Astoria, flows with more gallons per minute than the Mississippi. The Fraser River is the biggest salmon producing basin in the world, and rivers and streams flowing into the Salish Sea feed one of the biggest, most diverse ecosystems on the planet.
So no need to worry about water, we must have plenty, right? It’s been our manifest destiny to harvest and capitalize on all the resources that Mother Earth has gifted us. It’s okay to do as we please and live the American Dream. Thanks to free trade agreements, corporations can now cross borders, build pipelines, and send in super tankers, rail cars, and jumbo jetliners, all so products can now travel an average of 1,500 miles to reach customers. Yeah, it’s the global economy that stretches massive profits and Learjet con trails all the way to Wall Street.
Well, excuse me while I pull out a little William Blake… “Thou art my pride and self-righteousness; I have found thee out: Thou art revealed before me in all thy magnitude and power, Thy holy wrath and deep deceit cannot avail against me, for I am one of the living: dare not mock my inspired fury.”
Yes, many people have been so keen on keeping a lifestyle and culture going and growing that they didn’t notice how directly, and indirectly, our means of obtaining consumer products destroys life and marginalizes basic human rights.
While politicians talk about Middle East oil, we are left unaware that most of our oil comes from Canada, more specifically the Alberta Tar Sands, a scar on the earth covering 54,000 square miles, which is almost larger than the state of New York. Within this operation are 42,000 acres of toxic tailing ponds — the wastewater left after removing oil from the tar sand. Of course, to call them ponds is a bit of an understatement, for they are over 300 feet deep. Every day 2.9 million gallons leak out from these toxic ponds. It’s been called the biggest crime against nature on our planet. Imagine where those toxic waters end up and how much clean water is used in the process. Yet, pipelines to Mexico and the British Columbia coast that travel through even more critical habitat than in Alberta are being planned and backed by politicians who just see the oil revenue it produces.
In 2008, the United Nations agreed that safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. The General Assembly declared a deep concern that almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water.
40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into U.S. waters annually. Over 80% of items in landfills can be recycled, but they’re not.
Every two years we put as much pollution into the Puget Sound as the Exxon-Valdez spill. So do the math for the 21 years since a drunk Captain destroyed Price William Sound…here’s a recap of that disaster, from studies of both long-term and short-term effects of the oil spill.
Immediate effects included the deaths of, at best estimates, 100,000 to as many as 250,000 seabirds, at least 2,800 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, as well as the destruction of billions of salmon and herring eggs. The effects of the spill have continued to be felt for many years afterwards. Overall reductions in population were seen in various ocean animals, including stunted growth in pink salmon populations. The effect on salmon and other prey populations, in turn, adversely affected killer whales in Prince William Sound and Alaska’s Kenai Fjords region. Eleven members (about half) of one resident pod disappeared in the year following the spill. By 2009, scientists estimated that the AT1 transient population (considered part of a larger population of 346 transients), numbered only 7 individuals, and had not reproduced since the spill; this population is expected to die out. Sea otters and ducks also showed higher death rates in following years, partially because they ingested prey from contaminated soil and also from ingestion of oil residues on hair, due to grooming. Some twenty years after the spill, a team from the University of North Carolina found that the effects were lasting far longer than expected. The team estimates that some shoreline Arctic habitats may take up to thirty years to recover.
Orca whales in the Salish Sea are the most polluted whales in the world. When they die they need to be buried in a HAZMAT site. So many toxins are stored in their fat that Orca calfs are often stillborn.
Most fish stocks are at only 10% of historic levels. Many are not recommended to be eaten more than once a week, and not at all by pregnant women.
To cap it all off, the Puget Sound has been one of the most polluted bodies of water in the U.S. since 1993. So although having water is not an issue in the Northwest, water quality is. However, even in the Northwest now, some aquifers are drying up.
World Water Day is designed to give us pause — currently 3.6 million people die each year because they don’t have clean water to drink, and every day 4,000 children younger than five years old die from preventable, water-borne diseases.
Here’s another startling fact. TriplePundit reports that in the last 10 years, per capita consumption of bottled water in the U.S. has doubled, and we now drink an average of 200 bottles per person each year.
So while millions of people across the world don’t have access to clean water at all, Americans, the overwhelming majority of which have safe and cheap tap water flowing freely, choose to shell out tons of money for bottled water. And the industry is making a killing off of it.
Annie Leonard, who put together the hit Internet video, “The Story of Stuff,” and recently released a book by the same name, has now released a new short film, “The Story of Bottled Water.” Leonard illustrates how the bottled water industry has waged a war on tap water and convinced us to buy their plastic bottles, adorned with snow-capped mountains, even though the environmental and economic costs of bottled water are high.
Food and Water Watch reports that 17 million barrels of oil are needed to produce all the plastic water bottles we use in the U.S. each year — and, shockingly, 86 percent of them will never be recycled.
What many consumers don’t know is that a third of bottled water is actually from the same source as tap water. Companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Nestle, the big three water bottlers, are actually sucking municipal water systems for the product they bottle and sell back to us for hundreds and even thousands of times the cost.
Why do we use nondegradable materials for our disposable products? Plastic, styrofoam, and all the containers that our food comes in never breaks down in the environment. I’m sure many of you have heard of the Pacific Gyre, a flotsam of plastic the size of Texas floating out in the Pacific Ocean.
What about our population? How many new water services will our supply support? Now farmers are fighting with water boards who are dealing with the effects of global warming, decreased snow melt, and the resulting lower flow of rivers that has a negative effect on salmon and other spawning fish. Who gets the water, the farmers or the fish? (see link below)
http://www.grist.org/article/Californias-salmon-vs.-agribiz-interests
So how do we feel about our water now? How do we feel about our culture and lifestyle? Well, it’s all spilt milk, isn’t it! So when people talk about rain gardens and rain barrels; storm water treatment and sewage treatment; and excess fertilizer flowing off farms into the water, creating dead zones, and killing off marine life, we need to pay attention. It’s not an issue with simple answers, and each new home, factory, restaurant, and strip mall only adds to the problem. Cutting trees not only diminishes the habitat for wildlife, but it also removes the root system that holds water in the ground.
http://environment.change.org/blog/view/annie_leonard_tackles_our_bottled_water_addiction
This blog is trying to move with the flow of information and help people see that how we live on this planet does make a difference — that we are connected to the web of life. The more you connect with the natural world the more you’re going to care about how we impact it. We are not immune from what is happening in other parts of the world or from the decisions made in our local communities.
These birds did not survive
These eagles survived spill
The choice for the future is ours, it’s as black and white as these photos.