The majority of watersheds in our communities are degraded due to pollution, dams, and/or other man-made structures blocking or slowing natural flow.
Spending time in Atlanta, in February 2019, I ponder living in a concrete world. Rain poured earlier in the week and runoff gushed out of holes cut into the cement walls next to the sidewalks. Rain traveled through an impervious world finding ways to flow on its unnatural course creeping into the flat in the old building we were renting. Brown water, garbage and sediments advanced and effused into storm drains. Do people in urban areas think about the water that easily flows from pipes in their businesses or homes?
It is not just city dwellers who may take water and other natural resources for granted...it is the miner and CEO of industry...it is the farmer and rancher...it is the construction worker...it is the recreational water user...it is all of us. How do we achieve harmony with nature and live within its scope in a world that chooses the need to pursue goals of economic development and advanced technologies?
On June 1, 2018, my husband, Jim, and I began our nomadic journey away from the “American Dream” and outside the traditional paradigm of how people live. Author and co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project, Paul Kingsnorth, describes “withdrawing from the fray” in his book Confessions of A Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays. Kingsnorth continues, “Withdraw [ing] not with cynicism, but with a questing mind. Withdraw[ing] so that you can allow yourself to sit back quietly and feel - intuit - work out what is right for you, and what nature might need from you. Withdraw[ing] because refusing to help the machine advance - refusing to tighten the ratchet further - is a deeply moral position.” Jim and I wanted to explore, discover, and learn from and about the environment and humanity. So, we embarked on our adventure.
Our first travel quest took us to Alaska via the Alaskan Highway through Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon and into Alaska. Driving to Alaska is remote. We were elated to see the dramatic mountains, awe-inspiring glaciers and diversity of wildlife along the way. We observed a mother bear and her three cubs playing in a field, saw our first porcupine, and made a u-turn to see a herd of caribou. At the same time, we were distraught to see the countless turnouts and roads cut through the wilderness to provide access for timber and mining trucks and heavy equipment. We also warned our family and friends that we may not have cell service due to our remote locations. Surprisingly, we did have service. Cell towers loomed above the landscape throughout much of the Alaskan Highway.
Alongside the man-made turnouts and cell towers on the Alaskan Highway, blemishes continued to arise in this remote landscape - large plots of naked land exposed to the elements where maybe a mosaic of trees once stood...and plastic pipes extending out of rivers and streams. I wondered...are these pipes pumping water out or sending waste into the streams and rivers? Who is monitoring these operations in such a remote area? My contemplations around this strip of environment provoked emotions and questions pertaining to our connections to nature. I was awakening to the truths around the atrocities committed against our environment and at the same time, seeing the beauty and diversity existing in nature. In Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez describes the men working for the oil companies in Alaska. He shares, “...the world seemed on balance...or at least well intentioned. Part of what was attractive about these men was that their concern for the health of the land and their concern for the fate of the people were not separate issues...the fate of each hinged on the same thing, on the source of their dignity, on whether it was innate or not...” We can only hope “these men” along the Alaskan Highway had concern for the health of the land” and “concern for the fate of the people.”
We found on our journey that there are people “concern[ed] for the fate of the people.” Our first experience observing this concern for our environment happened on our resupply in Whitehorse, Yukon on the way to Alaska. We visited the local farmer’s market and noticed a banner with the slogan Protect the Peel. We inquired. The college intern working the booth explained the ongoing debate and history centering around the Peel Watershed. She explained that the Peel Watershed is one of the few pristine watersheds left in North America. The debate stems from the threat of mining and industry degrading the watershed of First Nations Peoples in the Yukon who hunt, fish and subsist off the land. These indigenous people who desire to live in harmony with the watershed and protect it for future generations. This brief conversation began my thirst for more knowledge around mining and watersheds. As we traveled through Alaska and back to the lower forty-eight states, we began to notice more and more evidence of debates around mining and watersheds. These observations were just the beginning of a recurring theme, our watershed.
In August 2018, we returned to the lower forty-eight states and landed in one of a few, cooler temperature spots we could find - Telluride, Colorado. As fate would have, I stepped into a local bookstore and eyed a book titled River of Lost Souls by Jonathon Thompson. I purchased the book to read and noticed a flyer next to the register: Author Talk with Jonathon Thompson at the Telluride Library on Sunday.
From Thompson’s lecture and book about the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, my thoughts were saturated with facts about abandoned mines and mining and the history and cost of natural resources and lives. I learned about tailings and acid drainage and what happens when an abandoned mine sits and leaves its “scarred history” on future generations. I learned how communities are willing to give up an entire watershed to economy. I learned the Navajos living in the San Juan Mountain region are afraid to use “their lands” on the Animas River for farming because of the unknown toxins permeating the ground and crops. I learned about the damage done to the land and the toxins and metals released into ground water that never really go away. I learned how industry throws around phrases like “treating water into perpetuity” when these mining companies cannot cost effectively make such a commitment. I learned that the Gold King Mine was a crisis to the people along the Animas River. However, the Gold King Mine incident is just one event - similar events occur repeatedly where mines have been abandoned, seeping toxins into ground water.
Spending a second week in Telluride, CO in the summer of 2019, I read an article about the restoration of the Delores River in Rico, CO. In the 2019 article, “Letting Nature Take Its Course” by Deanna Drew, she explains an experimental restoration project being conducted in Rico, CO to help control acid drainage from past mining in this area. Drew writes that the Rico community alerted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the “thick orange mineral sludge containing dangerously high levels of heavy metals” in 2011. According to Drew, the EPA ordered the Atlantic Richfield Company “to clean up the site and identify a long-term management solution for the tunnel’s perpetual flow.” Drew states that the scientists and engineers involved in the cleanup, observed that downstream of the mine existed a natural, riparian area with a healthy wetland.The scientists and engineers decided to use an experimental, restoration approach to stabilize one section of the Delores River using a “new passive wetland treatment.” The new process utilized natural materials to reduce metals in the water. The article stated that the passive wetland treatment system is showing a decrease in the metals. However, the article also stated that the wetlands will need to be “monitored and maintained for the foreseeable future...solids will still need to be dredged and wetland plants will need to be added and replaced.” The article claimed this natural restoration approach was more cost effective than the traditional treatment which treats the sludge as it drains into water ponds. Both approaches cost millions of dollars and need management. So, is this new natural approach really restoring? Or is it simply a perpetual, toxic garden to be constantly replanted and managed? Is either treatment truly sustainable?
For the next several months and into our second year on the road, we continued to witness more and more community efforts to protect and restore water quality and watersheds. Many communities and the people inhabiting them are thinking about nature close to home. There are many examples of local coalitions throughout North America trying to promote healthy watersheds and educate the public. One example of a community thinking about its watershed is Crested Butte, CO. To Protect and Restore is the motto for the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition in Crested Butte, Colorado. We found the following sign at a firewood box outside of town in June 2019:
Suggested donation of $5 for 7 pieces of firewood goes directly to the funding of portable toilets placed at camping spots in the surrounding valleys. These toilets are placed by the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition, a local non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Crested Butte’s local watersheds since 2004. Human waste in the back country and thus in our rivers and streams is becoming a major problem and health hazard. Please help fund the toilets you will be using tomorrow morning after a tasty cup of coffee. Please enjoy this beautiful place and help us preserve for future generations.
We also talked to locals who described the debate in Crested Butte around No to the Brush Creek Monstrosity. People in the Crested Butte community bonded to reject a 240-unit housing development that would not have sustainable access to water and would pollute local streams.
All of the community efforts we observed made an impact on my thinking and actions. I reflected on how I can help in the efforts to protect watersheds. Of course, Jim and I bought the firewood to support the Crested Butte coalition. But what else could I do as an individual to help? One effort I have consistently done for about fifteen years - pick-up trash. I recall the amount of plastics and trash we picked up in December 2018 while watching windsurfers near Tampa, Florida. One surfer told me that the amount of plastics we see occurs each day on this beach! He stated that most of the plastic is washing up from other places. We continued to pick up trash around lakes, on trails, and in campgrounds as we travel.
After reading Susan Freinkle’s Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, I began thinking about my use of plastics and how, at least, to limit the use. I had already stopped using plastic straws. And I am mindful when purchasing plastics. Limiting the use of plastics is hard. We are inundated with plastics in our world. What else can I do? I began educating myself about watersheds and completed the EPA’s Watershed Academy modules and read more books about our environment written by a variety of authors (see list of books at the end of this blog).
Then, in April 2019, we happened upon one of my favorite experiences on our travels. On a lark, Jim directed us to Ghost Ranch to camp, hike and just be where Georgia O’Keefe painted many of her desert landscapes. At the visitor center, there was a flyer asking for volunteers to help the Keystone Restoration Ecology group and the volunteers from the BioPark in Albuquerque, New Mexico with the Ghost Ranch Watershed Restoration Project. We decided to extend our stay at Ghost Ranch so we could volunteer for the project. Jen and Steve from Keystone Restoration Ecology explained to the volunteers about the power and intensity of the 2015 flash flood and the restoration efforts to correct the meander in the Chama River in order to slow the flow of the water. According to Steve, ranchers and farmers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s changed the flood plain in this area through poor agricultural practices - building up land to farm and graze animals.
Steve and Jen described the flood of 2015 as devastating - destroying buildings on the Ghost Ranch property, leveling the vegetation, moving boulders and bringing sediment that changed how the Chama River flowed. The project goal is to level the sediment, use existing rocks and boulders in order to slow down the water, replant the riparian zone plants, wetland plants and bank plants and try to recreate the original flood plain as much as possible. Listening to Steve and Jen discuss the river and the watershed and gaining hands-on experiences of cutting and planting willow shoots, moving and placing large rocks to redirect the water to form a different meander in the river, and shoveling clumps of wetland plants to restore the river banks was enlightening. The “book knowledge” I received from the EPA’s Watershed Academy coupled with this hands-on experience and the knowledge of Jen and Steve expanded my learning about watersheds and restoration.
This experience at Ghost Ranch fueled my desire to learn more about watersheds and anything water. Through more reading, traveling, and observing, I was shocked to learn in urban cities like Flint, Michigan and Baltimore Maryland, problems of lead pipes continue to exist contaminating drinking water resulting in poisoning children and sickening adults. Also, in urban areas, construction site runoff and the amount of impervious cover create more and more runoff sending heavy sediment loads into streams and ground waters changing its natural course and increasing flood risk. In Amity, Pennsylvania, fracking pushes toxic metals into the ground water seeping into well water people need to survive. In Eastern North Carolina where my family lives, turkey and hog houses send waste into surface water sources and ground water. A percentage of these same fecal wastes are allowed to fertilize crops adding more waste to surface and ground waters. In Amarillo, Texas, large feedlots dump manure producing extra nutrients from cows and other animals into surface water seeping into ground water. In agricultural and rural communities throughout North America, nutrient runoff from fertilizers, manure storage and septic systems add excess nitrates and phosphorous into water sources producing dangerous levels of algae and increasing the risk for eutrophication depleting oxygen from ponds and streams killing the native species. In coastal areas, high salinity and brackish waters are creeping inland due to rise in ocean levels. All of these water pollutants degrade and change the natural watershed.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a watershed consists of a land area that channels rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, and rivers and eventually to outflow points, such as reservoirs, bays, and the ocean. However, I prefer explorer, John Wesley Powell’s watershed definition, “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community.” The majority of watersheds in our communities are degraded due to pollution, dams, and/or other man-made structures blocking or slowing natural flow. Have we crossed a boundary where natural watersheds have evaporated? Are we solely dependent on technologies to have access to safe water?
According to the EPA’s Watershed Academy, there are point and non-point water pollutants. The EPA defines point source pollution as a single, identifiable source such as a sewage treatment plant. Since the establishment of the Clean Water Act in 1972, point source pollutants for surface waters are “more” regulated. The point source polluter must retain a permit with load allocations stating how much of a certain toxin or pollutant a water source can hold. This permittee then monitors the load allocation through a self-monitoring reporting system. How sustainable is quality water if we allow load allocations for a variety of toxins to be dumped into our surface waters? Do we trust those that are self-monitoring and self-regulating toxins entering our waters?
Non-point pollutants are much harder to regulate and according to the EPA are the number one cause of water pollution. Two examples of non-point water pollutants are agricultural and urbanization activities. Grazing animals may cause an increase in nutrients in the runoff through manure and fertilizers into water sources. These excess nutrients end up in streams, rivers and ground water. In urban areas, construction sites may cause extreme runoff and sediment disposal if not properly managed during a rain event. Non-point pollutants usually come from runoff from varied sources which bring sediment, nutrients, and other human-made pollutants into rivers, wetlands, lakes, streams and ground waters. There is no monitoring system for non-point pollutants - just suggested “best practices.” Communities can educate water users around these best practices.
While reading the material in the EPA Watershed Academy, I found it unsettling that the term “ecosystem service” was broadly used. I contemplated the word “service” attached to natural resources. I decided that Mother Earth cannot continue to benefit us when our decisions revolve around a capitalist society. We can no longer preach the word sustainability when we are past the sustainable mark. We cannot defend our current practices and protect our future. Rachel Carson’s words in her book, Silent Spring, published in 1962 haunt me -we are “moving on a faster trajectory than mankind’s sense of moral responsibility.” The machine is advancing and most of us are caught in a careless indifference. Maybe we cannot fathom ideas as immense as climate change, water wars, famine, overpopulation...Some of us feel we are immune to the suffering and hide in our consumerism and technological haze.
Rachel Carson suggested in 1962 that “the public” is not aware of true environmental issues because economics drive our society. In our social media driven world, we are aware. We are all witnesses. We are flooded with images and debates centered around poisoned waters, species extinctions, melting glaciers, rising ocean waters and plastics floating in our waters. We know the truth. We know industry and capitalism run our country. We crave it all and desire more. We do not want less. Our selfish desires hinder our ability to see who we are - humans dependent on things that drain and kill our natural resources.We are steeped in our self-centered world governed by those who choose sides around politics and economics. We are not basing decisions on humanity and the realization that natural resources are not here to “serve” us. For me, humane decisions start with clean and affordable water for all. The battles over water are already in motion over the Colorado, Nile, Jordan, Ganges, Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Water wars encompass issues concerning access to safe, quality water due to climate change, over population, and economic boundaries. How do we stop a course already set in motion?
Clean Water Act and the EPA suggest protecting the water from its source - the watershed. The EPA is only responsible to “help” monitor and regulate point source pollutions and surface waters. Many ecologists believe a wholistic approach to restoring and maintaining the watershed is the key to quality water. In the United States, it is the responsibility of each state to monitor and regulate watersheds. In reality, it is up to each community and its citizens. In Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Susan Freinkel comments, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” We all have a moral responsibility to make hard choices. Choices as simple as turning off the water when we brush our teeth or not using a plastic straw to bigger moral choices of decreasing or not buying overproduced chicken and beef or over developing land with no natural water source. We can research and find companies thinking about how to reduce water consumption while making their products or recycling the existing plastics (check out adidas.com and arvingoods.com).
We count on hope. Hope only lies in each of us to make a difference in small and big ways and to take care of the natural resources closest to us. I will continue to pursue volunteer activities that help the environment wherever my backyard is these days. I will be mindful of the best practices I know to help with water pollution. I will continue to think through my use of plastics and my consumption of products that use water wastefully. Just like a river sculpts the land, each of us need to carve out our own choices, moral responsibilities, and voice for Mother Nature to keep our selfish desires from further dilution of the natural world for our future generations. But, is there time to make changes? Who will do it? It is not just up to the youth of today to think about the future Earth. Everyone must act now.
To you the earth yields her fruit, and you shall not want if you but know how to fill your hands. It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied. Yet unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger. ~ Kahlil Gibran, 1923
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Selected Bibliography
Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. New York: RosettaBooks, LLC, 1968.
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1962.
Drew, Deanna. Letting Nature Take Its Course. San Juan Skyway Visitor Guide Summer/ Fall, 2019. Published May 2019.
Freinkel, Susan. Plastic: A Toxic Love Story. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011.
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet.
Kingsnorth, Paul. Confessions of A Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2012.
Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 1986.
Thompson, Jonathan. River of Lost Souls. Salt Lake City, UT: Torrey House Press, 2018.
Watershed Academy Modules (EPA)
Listing of Community Efforts Around Watersheds We Observed (So Far):
Protect the Peel (White Horse, Yukon)
No To Pebble Mine (Near Bristol Bay, Alaska)
San Miguel Watershed Coalition (Telluride, CO)
French River Watershed Protection Advisory Committee (Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia)
Water Not Gold (Near Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia)
Like Whales #No Pipe (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
No NAPL (Northern Access Pipe-Line) WATER IS LIFE (Buffalo, NY)
Save the Hooch (Riverkeepers of the Upper Chattahoochee)
Friends of the Reedy River (Greenville, SC)
Jefferson River Watershed Committee (Montana)
Moab Area Watershed Partnership (Utah)
Elk River Alliance (Fernie, British Columbia)
Delores River Restoration (Rico, CO)
Tomichi Creek Restoration (near White Pine, CO)
The following community efforts are all from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia…
Remember Deep Water Horizon
One Oil Spill Can Destroy Our Economy
Don’t Be a Fossil Fool
Offshore Drilling Not Worth the Risk
Other references and valuable resources about our environment.
Secret Knowledge of Water / Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America by Craig Childs
The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
“The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” (essay) by William Cronon
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich
Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America by Eliza Griswold
Downriver: Into the Future of the Water in the West by Heather Hansmen
Deep Creek by Pam Houston
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver (fiction)
Stand Up That Mountain by Erkskine Leutz
This Land Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back
Trespassing Across America by Ken Ilgunes
A Long Trek Home / Small Feet Big Land / Mudflats and Fish Camps by Erin McKittrick
Upstream by Mary Oliver
Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen
“Jefferson Rising: A restoration success story” by Tom Reed
The Sun Is A Compass: A 4,000 mile Journey Into the Alaskan Wild by Oline Van Hermert
Dark Waters - produced by Mark Ruffalo based on a New York Times article. (Movie)