For my course, Water and A Baptismal Life we listened to water experts as well as the theologians who reflected on water as a sign of the sacred.
The woman pictured above is Blanca, and she works for the water authority in New Mexico. Standing in a retaining pond at Ghost Ranch she explained to us the challenges of delivering water to a state population that has doubled in the past forty years as Baby Boomers retire and look for a warmer place to live in winter. Many of the newcomers don't understand that they are moving to a desert, and deserts don't have much water.
She informed us that much of the water in New Mexico comes from aquifers, natural underwater pools which contain ancient or fossil water. These aquifers are not recharged by the meagre rainfall so the wells go deeper and deeper, from one hundred feet to two hundred, to more than a thousand in the time she has worked for the authority. Now water is brought from the Colorado river and pumped across the Rocky Mountains to support domestic use and agriculture, which is actually 85% of water use in New Mexico. Blanca also told us that many rural communities simply run out of water for days at a time, and the authority works with them to upgrade their systems and educate them about water use.
The bible is a book of desert spirituality and we have many stories of water scarcity, significant meetings at wells, and renewal in the desert wilderness.
Do you attempt to use water judiciously? Do you know where your drinking water comes from? Do we pay enough for our water?
6 comments:
Is there anything more annoying than seeing an automatic sprinkler system working in the middle of a downpour?
I like to think I'm pretty conscious about the amount of water I use. I think because it is cheap, some people aren't too worried about how much they use.
We are awfully luck in this country that we can turn a tap on and have clean water to drink.
We have the Pigeon River running through our property. It is a beautiful waterway. Our water comes from a drilled well. We try and reuse some of our water (from the washing machine the water is reused for gardens and trees.) I agree with johnny that Canada is so lucky that we have clean water and lots of it.
I realize after my week away that it is harder for Canadians to really appreciate water because we have it in abundance.
I think, Laurie, that people who rely on wells have a keener sense of water's value.
I agree with you Johnny. And what about those folks who power wash their driveways? They have way too much time on their hands!
Thanks
Or what about those who buy bottled water? I don't get it. We are so fortunate to have clean drinking water in our taps. What's wrong with using a reuseable water bottle? My daughter informs me she is one of few at school who does. I am seeing more and more reuseable bottles on the soccer team. Makes one think.
We are fortunate to have clean drinking water, however after just having spent a day at the beach on Lake Ontario, I am not so sure about the health of our Great Lakes. That is an area we need to work on more for sure.
Good point Nancy. Coca Cola now sells more bottled water than Coke -- water wrapped in oil, as one person puts it. Bottlers use the regular municipal water, put it through a reverse osmosis process to remove smell and then sell it back to us for a thousand times more than they paid for it. Crazy!
We too were by Lake Ontario today and keenly aware of how much we take this vast amount of fresh water for granted.
In Saskatchewan, whenever you go into a community, you ask whether you can drink the water from the tap. Just recently in Stoughton, where we live, we have had a water advisory. We cannot drink the water without boiling it. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the owners), the bottled water company in town has really increased their business. Because I refuse to buy bottled water, we boil ours. It has become a part of our daily routine.
The town now has to invest in a new filtration system for our water, which comes from a well. There will be a significant increase in taxes to pay for it.
So, in Stoughton, we know where our water comes from, we boil it to make it clean for drinking, and we will pay for it through our taxes; but I still see people watering their lawns in the rain. I don't think the attitude towards water here is much different from anywhere else. Maybe it is still because we don't think we will ever lack for water.
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