Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer and former educator who lives in North Calais.
[L]oons glide nervously with one eye on the swimmer, the other on the bald eagle casually circling above as I make my way across the shimmering pond, a ritual more contemplative than aerobic. One small way of keeping the world’s madness at bay, suspended in breathtakingly gorgeous water, providing me an illusion of graceful agility almost impossible wrestling with terrestrial gravity.
But this summer, being metaphorically borne away by water isn’t quite so simple, as water itself has become the centerpiece of clamorous debate, over issues ranging from climate change and the environment; and from agribusiness to international terrorism. Perhaps most striking, as water catastrophes hit ever closer to home, is that Americans are realizing — maybe for the first time — both the vital importance and fragility of their water supply.
Recently half a million residents of Toledo, Ohio, have had their water subject to a “do not use” warning based on a toxic swill of ingredients including a blue-green algae bloom and a level of algal cyanotoxins from Lake Erie — some of which are so dangerous they were once considered as a potential military weapon. What’s worse is that there are no national standards for algal cyanotoxin, which makes monitoring voluntary and the distribution of such contamination in the water supply a complete and quite possibly deadly mystery.
Three hundred thousand residents of Charleston, West Virginia, were without access to potable water for 10 days last January when Freedom Industries, a facility that provides chemicals for cleaning coal, spilled 10,000 gallons of 4 – methylcyclohexanemethanol (MCHM) into the Elk River, just upstream from a water intake and distribution center that serves the most populous region of the state.
Even more troubling perhaps is the lack of clarity about exactly how dangerous the chemical might be to human health since the single known scientific study apparently only measured its toxic effect on rats. And even that research has not been made publicly available by the Eastman Chemical Co., the manufacturer of MCHM.
In California and much of the Southwest, the problem isn’t water pollution but the very real prospect that in the not too distant future there will be very little water at all, particularly for the agriculture that provides over 50 percent of the nation’s fruits, nuts and fresh vegetables. The unprecedented drought has remained unchanged even after torrential rains fell over both northern and southern portions of the state earlier in the month, triggering mudslides and flash floods in the mountains west of Los Angeles. Although the situation is termed “extreme” in 82 percent of the state, almost 60 percent suffers with the most severe measure there is … ”exceptional.”
In Detroit, the water problem isn’t drought or pollution but the city’s decision to turn off the water of residents who hadn’t paid their bills, a “violation of human rights,” according to a group of United Nations experts. Largely, those affected, among the poorest residents, are caught up in an “underlying dynamic of huge (expensive) water infrastructure, declining population and increased poverty,” according to Dr. Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University.
But you needn’t travel far or wide to find water issues. Since the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in May that Montpelier did not have the authority to limit access to Berlin Pond — the city’s water supply — the pro-con debate over recreational use has saturated news coverage; op-ed pages; and letters to the editor.
A poverty rate more than double the national average coupled with some of the highest water rates in the country and the loss of over a million residents since 1950 have shifted the burden of financing an enormous water infrastructure to those least able to afford it.
And it was the prospect of water as weapon that prompted initial U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq last month after ISIS militants captured the Mosul Dam, threatening inhabitants with 12.5 million cubic meters of water, enough to inundate the village with a wall of water over 10 feet deep.
But you needn’t travel far or wide to find water issues. Since the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in May that Montpelier did not have the authority to limit access to Berlin Pond — the city’s water supply — the pro-con debate over recreational use has saturated news coverage; op-ed pages; and letters to the editor. Fishermen and kayakers maintain that responsible use of the resource is not only safe for the water quality but a constitutional right as well. Opponents argue that the pond is shallow (25 feet at its deepest) and consequently even more vulnerable to the myriad environmental threats facing a pristine body of water that could be transported by boaters and sportsmen.
As I glide through this luxury of water on an early September afternoon, the small spit that passes for a beach is completely deserted as it has been for almost a week. A couple of wet, sunless days and cool nights conspire to disrupt the complacency of summer as much as the opening of school and the first couple of crimson leaves rattling through the crisp air. More wetsuits are showing up as a couple of diehards try to stretch it out, staving off the inexorable slide toward the point when “bracing” no longer applies.
A belted kingfisher bounces from tree to tree, occasionally, slamming into the surface in a search for aquatic insects or small fish, his shaggy crest silhouetted against billowing clouds that look like a gated community for wizards. Like loons, eagles and humans, he is completely reliant on water, at the mercy of its depletion or corruption. If a belted kingfisher is your totem, according to legend, you should move as far north and live as close to water as possible, vaguely comforting for someone whose origins — like a lot of other Vermonters — are well south and who realizes what a privilege it is to be able to swim here every day.
I wade toward shore as a brilliant and warming sun breaks through, knowing millions of people would trade places with me at the drop of a hat if they could and I’m humbled by the reality that billions of others for whom water is a vital and scarce resource would be dumbfounded by our taking it for granted.
