05031 Urban Water Issues
Bioregionalists show a primary concern for their own local areas. There are a surprisingly large number of opportunities to address everyday living conditions for the benefit of local sustainability; as wide-ranging as resident-based reforestation projects in rural areas and community gardens in cities. Their influence is felt most strongly on county and city levels because this is where they take place and are most visible. Watershed-based organizations with bioregional priorities for basins as small as a creek or as large as the Great Lakes are a steadily growing phenomenon. Their recommendations to boards, councils, and other agencies aren’t limited to creek restoration, water conservation, and other obvious issues, but may also include redrawing political borders to fit watershed lines and adopting ecological urban plans. — Peter Berg
Three big water issues constitute 800 pound gorillas contending for space in our urban living rooms:
- Adequate supplies of drinking water.
- Storm water
- Abuse of watersheds with pollution and waste and excessive appropriation of resources for human consumption.
Many urban water systems are triumphs of political, ecological, and economic irrationality.
We bring water to cities, often from remote areas, via long and expensive runs of pipe, pumping stations, and water treatment facilities.
We expend vast resources to make the water safe for drinking.
Then we defecate and urinate in a considerable portion of that water, making it useless for human consumption.
We use the toilet as a convenient disposal, and thoughtlessly flush considerable amounts of non-biodegradable solids such as cigarette butts, condoms, unwanted pharmaceutical drugs, and feminine hygiene products into the regional watershed. Households and businesses thoughtlessly pour toxic chemicals down the drains with little practical restraint. We think "out of sight, out of mind" is an expression of reality but it is a delusion fostered by structures of greed, gluttony, and selfishness that encourage us to consume and waste without a single thought for the consequences of our actions.
Because of these imprudent practices with our water, we must invest vast resources in cleaning the water before sending it downstream to its next users. We don't always do a good job with that. It's becoming apparent that even our best urban systems do not get all the pollution. Micropollutants, including powerful pharmaceuticals and toxic criminals, are found everywhere. The government assures us the water is safe. Should we believe them? How many times has the government lied to us for its own corrupt reasons? How many times has industry corrupted government in order to control information?
While doing all these expensive manipulations/pollutions with our drinking water, our storm water systems collect the free water sent to us by the hydrological cycle. The systems discharge this free water, as quickly as possible, polluted with petrochemicals, lawn chemicals, bits of asphalt roofs, and the other polluted accouterments of city life, often without any treatment whatsoever, into the surrounding watershed.
It’s a mess — that’s the most charitable thing I can say about our system. It wastes and pollutes precious scarce fresh water as though it were the most abundant resource on -earth, instead of being only a small fraction of the total water on the planet. While it’s possible to purify salt water, that embodies an unsustainable energy cost.
The scale of the problem is such that it is hard to see what any one individual urban resident or household can do in the face of such waste. Our governments designed our systems to waste and pollute. It takes effort to not waste and not pollute.
We got into the present disastrous situation one bad decision at a time, made by millions of people over long periods of time. The beginning of a better relationship with our water and the watersheds where we live begins with individual people and their households who accept personal responsibility for their use of water. As people stop abusing their watersheds, it will become possible to develop more rational water systems that care for people, care for the planet, and have a care for the future.
The Necessary Elements of an Ethical Personal Water Use Plan
Everyone who wants to care for people, care for the planet, and have a care to the future needs to make water issues a high priority in their lives. Everyone can practice these water conservation principles in accordance with their circumstances.
Practice good water discipline. Take short showers. Don’t run water while you shave, brush your teeth, clean your dentures or your contact lenses.
Never pour anything toxic down a drain. This includes most conventional cleaning products. Use natural cleaners like vinegar, ammonia, soap, baking soda, and peroxide to clean sinks, bath tubs, and toilets. Don’t use bleach or products containing bleach such as the popular powdered cleansers. Research resources like the Environmental Working Group's database on household chemicals and products to make informed decisions. http://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners
Never flush anything down a toilet other than human waste and toilet paper. No cigarette buts, no condoms, no tampons, no pharmaceutical drugs that you no longer need or are out of date. Only use natural cleaning products like vinegar, baking soda, and borax to clean your toilet. Clean it more often and it will be less work to do so.
If you must own a car, and if you must wash it, always wash it at a commercial car wash. Never wash your car in your driveway where the water runs into the storm sewer system.
Never pour anything other than water down the storm sewer system. Fix any fluid leaks from your car so the leaks don’t pollute the storm water run-off.
Don’t flush urine. Put a sign over your toilet that reads — “If it’s yellow it’s mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.”
Don’t drink bottled water unless there is a problem with your municipal water supply or there is no other source (such as after a major disaster).
If your situation allows for it, compost your humanure and fertilize your plants with diluted urine (one part urine to ten parts water).
If you own a home with a lawn, do not use any chemical pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. Use only natural products like compost and compost teas for fertilizer. Sculpt the lawn area so that it contains rainwater within your yard where it soaks into the ground around your plants. Harvest as much rainwater as is possible for your circumstances.
Encourage your workplace, school, place of worship, and public buildings to harvest rainwater and to manage their grounds organically in order to prevent pollution of the watershed. Churches should especially be encouraged to care for the planet, care for people, and have a care for the future.
Going beyond individual action.
The actions listed above are the important first steps. Besides doing and being good in and of themselves (and doing good is always the right thing to do), they give you Authenticity and authority in your work with invisible structures to change local watershed policies,
They are not the entire task at hand.
An opportunity to teach others better water habits,
As you study the issues of your watershed — preferably in conjunction with others — over time you will develop ideas about what needs to happen in your watershed (or watersheds, depending on the size of your urban area, there may be more than one watershed involved).
If you aren’t sure where to start when you look at the larger picture, begin with harm reduction or elimination. Develop structures and systems that reduce or eliminate sources of water pollution. Work on small and big issues. For example, smokers are notorious for just tossing cigarette butts anywhere. A public information campaign to discourage this would benefit the watershed, as would enhanced penalties for littering cigarette butts and proactive enforcement.
Protect all wildlife — fish, birds, animals. They are essential actors in all watersheds.
Encourage broadscale water conservation.
Study the problem of industrial pollution of your watershed, including water pollution incident to any energy production activities (like fracking of oil and gas wells). The beneficial solution is to work with industrial and commercial polluters to end their pollution of the watershed. Pollution is waste. Better design of their processes will eliminate waste. Industries and commercial enterprises that create pollution are waste possibly valuable assets that should be used for the benefit of the enterprise, its owners, workers, and other stakeholders. If the polluters are publicly owned corporations, there are opportunities for stockholders resolutions and lawsuits. Encourage customer boycotts of products that are egregious polluters of watersheds.
Observe, study, evaluate, design a response, and take action to save your watershed from pollution and waste. Our children, to the seventieth generation, will thank or curse us, depending upon our response to the needs of these times.
Personal behavior first!
Invisible structures next!