By the Waters We Lived, and Still Do

Hyco Creek, Deep Creek, Yadkin River, Belews Creek, Janes Creek, Lynn Branch, Turkey Creek, North Fork Red River, Lake of the Ozarks, Arkansas River, Little Spring Creek, Lake Taneycomo, White River, Turnback Creek, Lake Fort Gibson, Walnut Creek, Roaring River, Platte River, Current River, Mississippi and Missouri rivers. All of these “waters” have played a role in my family heritage, going back to 1785 when Laughlin McElyea got a land grant of 200 acres “on the waters of Hyco Creek” in Caswell County, North Carolina. Both my father’s and mother’s families, as well as Norm’s, lived or played alongside the waters I have named above—and many more that I can’t think of. Photo above: North fork of Deep Creek, Yadkin County, NC.

From an early age, I was forbidden to go out our back gate and into the creek, but it fascinated me. The boy next door would go fishing for crawdads in it. One day we found an empty beer can floating in it, and I was horrified that anyone would trash my precious creek, with its rock walls that went back to the WPA that now had tall saplings growing up out of them. Once the creek flooded and came far up into our yard, causing a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. A few years later, it was covered over and buried…turned into an enclosed storm water drainage system. Further from our block, it still remained open and free, and once I was old enough to venture out on my bicycle, I would still visit it regularly. I came to respect water and the creatures that depend on it as I explored Walnut Creek. Photo above: Linville River just above Linville Falls, Blue Ridge, North Carolina.


When I think about it, most of my family has lived near a creek or river at some time. I treasure a photo of my grandparents celebrating their engagement in a park alongside the North Fork of the Red River in Oklahoma. Before oil was discovered, before agricultural runoff became commonplace, before sewers were discharged into rivers instead of septic fields….our nation’s waters were a delight. As a Girl Scout camper in Oklahoma, I enjoyed wading through Little Spring Creek and canoeing on local lakes. Norm’s mother and her siblings appear in a photo taken when they were swimming in the Smoky Hill. Photo above: the Calusahatchee River estuary at Fort Myers, Florida, just before it joins the Gulf of Mexico.

Water is basic not only to our pleasure, but to our life itself. And yet our streams and lakes are often abused, used as a dumping ground for pretty foul stuff. I remember learning in high school chemistry that water is “the universal solvent” but we are pushing our luck today. In parts of the Western U.S., aquifers are depleted, making deeper wells necessary and the rivers above them are now always dry. Elsewhere in the world, waters that fill with snow melt are shrinking with climate change, and others are swelling as severe rains drench impoverished peoples in India, Pakistan and China. In the middle east and elsewhere, wars are fought over rights to fresh water since it is so scarce. Photo above: Lakes Park in Fort Myers, FL, nature reclaimed from a quarry.

One important local issue for me is a proposal to build a large casino and entertainment complex right next to a wildlife refuge on a wetland along the Mississippi River just past its historic confluence with the Missouri River. There are more kinds of pollution that just the icky stuff in the water, but it’s also true that this project is just upstream from the intake for the city of St. Louis’ drinking water supply. Photo above: Confluence of the Missouri (left) and Mississippi (upper right) rivers north of St. Louis. There's a proposal to build a casino complex just downstream from this historic site.

DoSomething.org < http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-pollution> quotes these facts about the effects of pollution in our waters:

· 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.

· The Mississippi River – which drains the lands of nearly 40% of the continental United Sates – carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year. The resulting dead zone in the Gulf each summer is about the size of Massachusetts.

· 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually.

· Polluted drinking waters are a problem for about half of the world’s population. Each year there are about 250 million cases of water-based diseases, resulting in roughly 5 to 10 million deaths. Photo above: the Missouri River at Confluence Conservation Area north of St. Louis, August, 2008.


Now that I have spent this week thinking about water, I’m going to look at that flowing, clean, safe, abundant stream of water coming from my kitchen faucet with renewed admiration and respect. What can we do, what are we doing, to help preserve our nation’s rivers, lakes and seacoasts, and to clean up waters that have become polluted? To help less fortunate folks get access to clean and plentiful water? I realize I’m not doing nearly enough, and I will look for ways to do more. Photo: Ice closes the Mississippi River to barge traffic in January north of St. Louis.

Today is Blog Action Day, and the theme is WATER. Here is a link to the National Resources Defense Council web site, where you can find more information about how to clean up our rivers and other waters.

One final thing you can do is join me in signing a petition supporting the United Nations’ effort to bring clean, safe water to millions of people. Just click on the badge at the top of the right rail on this blog, and the widget will take you there. Photo at right: Mississippi River above flood stage at Cape Girardeau, MO.