Monday, May 02, 2005
Water, Water Everywhere, But Not Really
I don't think most of my pals know this, but I have been interested in water issues for a number of years. It was a slow evolution to the specific interest, since where and when I grew up, the only water issues were making sure the PCB level in lake Michigan weren’t too high to swim. That’s the mid-70s or so, on the south end of the lake. When I got older, and studied the Indiana Dunes biosphere in more detail in school, I was amazed to find out how slowly water circulates in the southern part (MY part) of the lake. Stories like acid rain, the constant flooding of the Little Calumet River, the erosion of the Northern Indiana beaches, and the demise of commercial fisheries in Michigan City meant that water issues were a constant drumbeat in the background of my life.
But it was just background, because when you live around Lake Michigan, you never really worry about having water, just about whether it’s clean or not. I did my qualifying SCUBA dive in an East Chicago quarry, with steel mills and textile factories visible over the built-up rock ledges around the quarry. Growing up in industrial Indiana in the 70s and 80s meat you thought more about how you shouldn’t drive a Japanese car to the mills for your summer job, than about mercury build-up in rainbow trout in the lake. You were aware of both, but one had a more immediate impact on your life. You just avoided eating fish, which was easier than fixing where angry steel guys would key your side panels or maybe even bust up your Subaru entirely.
Then I moved to New York for college, and I thought about water mostly as an infrastructure issue. News reports during hot summers would mention the Central Park Reservoir being at low levels. Professor Seymour Melman told his students about how water main breaks used to be front page news, and now they happened so often they were seldom covered at all. I distinctly remember that Prof. Melman said that one of the main pumps that directed fresh water from the Hudson River to the thirsty mouths of New Yorkers hasn’t been turned off in over twenty (or fifty) years. Everyone knew the pump was likely in desperate need of maintenance, but the fear was that the utility people would be unable to turn the pump back on again. It sounded like driving a really old used car: you listen constantly to the plinks and pings, convinced that the next one is going to be the death knell of the car.
Then, in the mid-90s, my Dad thought about betting involved in a business dedicated to building portable water purification units. Basically, the way most portable water purification systems work is by using UV light to sterilize and carbon filters. The company was going to build and market backpack sized units for used in extreme conditions -- like rain forest expeditions. With these units, you can pretty much dump sewage into one end and get clean water out the other. That’s an overstatement, but not by much.
And then I’ve gone to Burning Man the last couple of years. For me, one of the most interesting parts of that experience was the ability to create this temporary city in pretty extreme conditions. The lack of water in the Black Rock Desert is the most obvious problem, even compared to the dust storms and the heat and all the hippie drum circles.
In the last few months, I’ve been living in Florida, and this interest has crystallized into a plan: start working on water issues for a living. Frankly, I’m too old to want to start over from scratch and do the pure science. It feels like it would take too long to catch up to those who have been doing it for years already. And I also have 15 years of experience in communications and research that I don’t think should be thrown away. Toward that end, I am looking at graduate schools which have good Environmental policy programs.
While I do that, I’m reading extensively about water issues, and I figure to start posting about them on this here journal. I’ll post a few I have stored up in a bit. And later today, I think I might write some about lawns.
Destruction and and the Hidden World
I don't think I'm alone in loving DVD commentary tracks, often more than I like the movie itself. A lot of time, you get details that are larger than the movie itself. like with the director commentary for PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. Gore Verbinski talks about how hard it was to find any beautiful cove that wasn't completely developed b y people already. Look one direction and see verdant palms and cerulean sea. Turn around and check out the 40-room hotel and the attached 24-hour casino.
When the entire world is overdeveloped, sometimes destruction is an creator of new horizons and views. Two stories along that line, one from the US and one from Iraq.
Iraq first . After the first Gulf War, there were uprisings in the Mesopotamian Marshlands in southern Iraq. As part of crushing those uprisings, Saddam Hussein (using British plans that dated from the 1950s colonial period) built “an extensive and elaborate system of drainage and diversion structures”. Sounds like dams and canals to me, but it may be something more.
In any case, when the U.S. invaded in 2003, dykes near Basra were destroyed, which reflooded approximately 20% of the area. The Eden Again project is dedicated to taking this opportunity to rebuild the wetlands, and make better use of the water. (“Eden Again” comes from the legend that the Garden of Eden story may be based on these wetlands.)
The other example of creation from disaster I read about today involves the Glen Canyon. Any of you who know a bit bout the environmental movement are probably familiar with Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. One of the main plot concepts in that book was to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam, which created the artificial reservoir called Lake Powell and covered up canyons that Abbey considered as beautiful as any in the world.
Well, the ongoing drought in the southwest has caused Lake Powell to drop by 144 feet, to about 33% of what it was in July of 1999. The drought has many disturbing implications for drinking water and power generation in the Southwest and in Southern California. But ill winds and silver linings mean that you can go and see the beauty that Abbey wrote about in 1875, beauty that hasn’t been visible for over 30 years.
Travel writer Susan Spano wrote about this for the LA Times, though I read about it in the Tampa Tribune: Exposing Utah's depths