A recent article told of a 70- year-old Snohomish County farmer who couldn’t manage his farm any longer or find a buyer for it. So he sold the output of his farm’s spring to a corporation that was moving into the water business. It seems that tying up and selling water is becoming a popular way to make a buck.
We westerners think back fondly to times when we drank from streams and weren’t bothered if the sprinkler ran all night. Water was pure and cheap. To find water you hired a local guru with a peculiar gift for “witching” wells. He pointed out the magic place, you dug a hole and lo, the bottom of the hole filled with water. No one regulated home-dug wells and as far as I knew, no one died from drinking water from private wells.
That was then. This is now. As I look outside, the street is puddled with rainwater. Munson Creek burbles along ankle-deep behind the house. With the flip of a lever, clear water bearing a faint odor of chlorine pours from my kitchen tap. A case of Kirkland bottled water rests in my pantry. Now and then I flush a couple of gallons down one of our toilets. Compared with most of the world, we in Marysville have it made when it comes to water supply—even though our fair city buys much of its water from Everett.
A friend who once lived up Nigeria’s Benue River near Yola learned how to budget water. The murky Benue is hippo-heaven. Once each week some men rolled a 55-gallon drum of Hippo-scented river water to her house. Fifty-five gallons of un-clear water for drinking, cooking and washing. At least she had it delivered. Neighbor-ladies made the daily trek to the river with buckets on their heads.
Overseas, we lived in a house that had a reservoir in the attic. On a good day we could hear water dribbling in against its dry bottom. On a very good day we had enough water for cooking and bathing the kids. In that situation it was considered very up-scale to have water piped into the house, whether the pipes delivered as advertised or not.
The school where I worked often ran out of water, leaving the students to draw water from a creek that was used for — well, use your imagination. During a drought I loaded my trusty VW beetle with jerry cans and drove to a compound that had a reliable well. Back on campus I unloaded my treasure in front of the dormitories and took cover. When water is really scarce, parched people lose civilized behaviors to an animal ferocity.
All this is to say that our world is facing increasing shortages of good water, shortages that will lead to conflict if not met. While governments should be acting to ensure lasting supplies of public water, it is corporate interests that are quietly tying up as much water as possible, knowing that the era of unlimited water consumption is coming to an end.
Nestle Foods negotiated a contract with the Community Service District of Siskyou County to suck up 250 million gallons of McCloud River water per year. All of it to be marketing in plastic bottles. But watchdogs blew the whistle on the deal, pointing out that the McCloud River couldn’t stand the draw-down and that the millions of plastic bottles would pose an environmental issue of their own.
Back on the ranch, we like to let water run until it’s suitably cool for drinking and leave the bathroom tap running while we brush teeth or shave. But growing water bills are turning us conservative about how much water goes on the lawn. Some of us, that is. A drive around Marysville’s subdivisions shows that about half the lawns being left to nature for watering.
But it’s not always the greenest lawns that use the most water. Well-designed sprinkler systems deliver just enough water during hours when evaporation is at a minimum to keep grass lush in the driest of weather. Further, automatic sprinkler patterns are set to keep from wasting water on sidewalks and driveways.
Though the PNW is famous for its damp climate, it doesn’t have much of a surplus of water. One year we might get a super-surplus, the next could be dry-ish. Rivers seldom carry enough water to serve both irrigation and hydro-power while leaving enough for fish to migrate upstream. The snow-pack we depend on for summer run-off diminishes with global warming. In this period of radical climate extremes, imagine the worry among British Columbia’s planners who, as hosts for the Winter Olympics, bet the bank on ample early snow.
We average about 27 inches of rain each year. Compare that with Honduras where 6 feet of rain fell in three days during a hurricane. Averages seem increasingly meaningless when what used to be hundred-year rainfalls and hundred-year droughts now pop up every twenty years or so. Uncertainty about this or next year’s annual rainfall ought to drive us to make preparations.
Proper choice of plumbing fixtures, washing machines and dishwashers, installing cisterns for catchment of roof run-off and low-demand garden design can help to ensure that present water sources will be adequate for the future. Just taking lawns off life-support to allow grass’s natural summer slumber would end concerns about water supply for decades to come.
Comments may be addressed to: rgraef@verizon.net.
