what to do about water...

Water has been on my mind lately. And those of you who know me well know that I haven't always been great about actually drinking it. It's just not something I think about often. I haven't had to. And yet, whenever I've wanted water, it's been right there waiting for me. Easily accessible, without a thought nearly my entire life.

Life in Latin America has made me much more aware of water. The heat demands it, the faucet often unexpectedly fails to dispense it in the city, and the lacking resources in the country make it tough to find and too dirty to drink. 1 in 6 people globally do not have clean drinking water. Families that have taken me in and generously shared their homes with me, walk miles to get water and carry it home, use it scarcely and respectfully and still, tragically, in the last few years, they have watched their children die of diseases caused by dirty drinking water.


Earlier this year a friend recommended the documentary FLOW: For the Love of Water, to me and watching it changed the urgency with which I think about water. (http://www.flowthefilm.com/trailer) The scarcity is scary, absolutely. But what's more frightening to me, is the ease with which we're letting companies bottle and sell us something we can drink for next to nothing from our faucets. That's scary in a country with resources, and even more so in countries where expendable incomes are something known only among the elites.

As I was looking around for different facts about water today I went to google and was less than thrilled to be reminded about our little $79 million moon-bombing to look for water there. I just don't get. Not at all. Am I way out of line to feel that we should start taking care of water sources here on Earth first? That we should start claiming our Earthly water sources for people and nations and thirsty populations before large corporations buy, pollute and exploit them?

After a visit from my family here and their wonderfully relentless asking 'what can we do about it all?' I've been thinking about how to give more ideas for action and hope here in this little blog space I call my own. Of course these are always just suggestions, and I'll hope you'll keep reading even if not moved to action, but I know that being witness to life in a third world country is both a privilege and a responsibility. I personally need to remember that I am connected to people of other nations. That I can affect their lives positively. Probably not as much as I'd like to, but who doesn't need water? This is one sustainable, tangible, easy way we can improve people's quality of life.

A few ideas:

Those of us privileged enough to have regulated, drinkable tap water, should drink tap water, and encouraging our local and state governments to protect it and the water sources in our home states.

Educate yourself about water!
- Watch FLOW (Rent it or search for it online, many documentary sites provide free links)
- Read one of the many books out there bringing this issue to light: Blue Gold, Bottlemania, etc...

Donate to organizations helping abroad:

charity: water - building wells in Africa to bring clean water to entire communities

Potters for Peace - Helps potters around the world set up facilities to produce and sell water filters to families that don't have access to an uncontaminated well or other clean water source. The filters are low-tech, low-cost ($15-25), and effectively eliminates 99.88% of most water-born diseases.

"The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people."

-LBJ, 1965 when singing the Clean Water Act