Connection to Water

“We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.”

― Andy Goldsworthy

As I look at Goldsworthy’s quote that we are not separated from nature, but connected, I begin to wonder how am I nature. And my thoughts turn to water. How much of me is water?

There is a unity in water. The earth is 70% water. I am made up of 70% water. I am told to convert the number of my weight in pounds to ounces and drink that many ounces of water every day.  I watch women pass up the coffee to fill water jugs every morning.  In the kitchen, folks opt for filling “to go” 32-ounce Barbeque restaurant gimme cups with water in lieu of brimming coffee mugs. I consider the importance of water and my connection to it on a celluar level  Throughout this spring, I have been reminded of the importance of water.  From Water emerges Love, if you are Greek, or the proto-human if you are an evolutionist. In many cultures, to emerge from water is a symbolism of new life.

What happens when we emerge from our culture's water?  Are we reborn? Or are we closer to death?

Fracking is a concern for many Texans. Pollution of our ground water and in our streams often hits front-page headlines. Pollution in large ports and from industry and agriculture come in both seemingly benign forms of fertilizer and cattle or poultry off-waste and in recognizably dangerous forms.  All of the forms play a part in pollution of Texans water and waterways. 

In 2012, Texas Monthly cited Texas waterways as the 4^th most polluted in the United States (Smith 2012).

What is my connection to water? I return to this. I spent my life around water.  I grew up with a creek in the backyard of my childhood home. There were frogs and fish and snakes:  it was a wild place for a young girl. I was a swimmer, and now, my eldest boy is a swimmer. I swam in lakes and rivers and pools.  Today, those same locations are installing pools because kids will not swim the lakes or rivers.  And honestly, there might be good reason.

As I began the readings and research,  I think back to my days of  “the swimming of the innocent.”

I consider those who had connections to nature particularly water, that Goldsworthy indicates.  First on my research list were people who worked with water or whose livelihood was dependent on water.

It brought to mind Weatherford, Texas, a charming West Texas town, near Fort Worth. Weatherford has been in the news for its water. To the unhappy residences, tap water fizzing and catching on fire is a visible health risk. Drilling in nearby Ranger County appears to be responsible for the dramatic change in the water.

In 2013 the Associated Press reported that Weatherford water had set off a series of inquiries from the State and EPA. 

“WEATHERFORD — When a man in a Fort Worth suburb reported his family’s drinking water had begun 'bubbling' like champagne, the federal government sounded an alarm: An oil company may have tainted their wells while drilling for natural gas.

At first, the Environmental Protection Agency believed the situation was so serious that it issued a rare emergency order in late 2010 that said at least two homeowners were in immediate danger from a well saturated with flammable methane. More than a year later, the agency rescinded its mandate and refused to explain why.

Now a confidential report obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with company representatives show that the EPA had scientific evidence against the driller, Range Resources, but changed course after the company threatened not to cooperate with a national study into a common form of drilling called hydraulic fracturing. Regulators set aside an analysis that concluded the drilling could have been to blame for the contamination.” (Plushnick-Masti, 2013)

As of January of 2014, a new report appears to have fostered enough interest to prompt the EPA to reopen the case.

Interested in the report, I recently visited Weatherford, meeting with museum and tourism professionals. It was easy to learn about the issues because water comes up frequently in conversation. It’s like talking about the weather. In several unrelated conversations—we were talking about Museum operations and fund raising, the topic of water kept surfacing. I asked “How is the community connected to water?”

The director of the Museum of the Americas said, “We don’t like to talk about the big oil companies here in Weatherford.” Another local resident discussed her livelihood as a peach farmer.  She is dependent on water for her crop.  And on another note, I was told that Texas lakes are several feet below normal levels all over the state. My community is concerned about its relationship to water. Necessary for farming and sustaining healthful living, water quality must be preserved.

The importance of water quality, reminded me of a 2012 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s pivotal book The Silent Stream (1962). Although Rachel Carson was discussing pesticides and other harmful chemicals, she could have been talking about the chemicals used in fracking when she said, “I contend, furthermore we have allowed these chemicals to be used with little or no advance investigation of their effect on soil, water, wildlife, and man himself. Future generations are unlikely to condone our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of natural world that supports all life”  (Carson, 1962, pg. 130.)

With great prescience, Carson understood what Goldsworthy explained years later.  We are all connected to the natural world and we need to nurture that relationship. To the end of a “prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world,” we must ask ourselves the questions implicit in both Goldsworthy’s and Carson’s statements. How are we connected to the natural world? How do we support that natural world which supports all life?