Happy World Water Day.
If you ask me, everyday should be heralded as a celebration of water, and one third of the global population agrees with me, considering their day revolves around finding the liquid gold.
That’s right, 2.2 billion people don’t have safely managed drinking water. 4.2 billion people don’t have safely managed sanitation services and 3 billion lack handwashing facilities.
If you woke up with running water from your faucet, count yourself blessed.
My name is Genevieve. I’m a Mansfield native and grew up enjoying the many trails JT provides for us locals. I recently graduated with my Master of Science in Environmental Engineering from UConn, where I researched water and how the citizen science process and data can contribute to progressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (accepted for publication three days ago!). In the fall I’ll start my PhD journey and I will research the relationship between engineering and human rights. My appreciation of water and our extreme dependence on it led me to these studies, so thank you for that water!
This piece could be about how, as I mentioned in the beginning, if you woke up this morning and turned on a faucet or flushed a toilet you belong to the two-thirds of the population who can do this with ease, without even thinking twice about it. If I wrote about that, I would underscore water preservation, appreciation and our gratitude towards the many civil and environmental engineers who work seamlessly behind the curtain of society to make sure you have uninterrupted access to water. (Thank your local utilities!)
This could also be about a piece how water is continually around us and only recently with technical innovation have we, seemingly, removed the illusion that we are totally, completely, 100% dependent on water. If you want to read more about that, check out Giulio Boccaletti’s book, Water: A Biography. I got mine from the Mansfield Downtown’s B&N store. Since many of us are no longer farmers, or at least depend on growing all of our own food, we have somehow let water become the backdrop of our day and lives. (Thank your local farmers by stopping by your local farmers market)
Don’t worry; this guided appreciation towards water will not lead towards an academic assault on your 45-minute hot showers, I’m not going to tell you a 45-minute shower uses 100 gallons of water or that heating water is probably your second largest household expense, responsible for 19% of your home heating bill, so you don’t have to brace yourself for that (you can read more here if that peaked your interest). ☺
Many today may write about the human right to water, the salination of groundwater on coastlines due to sea level rise, the acidification of our oceans, the effects of microplastics on water quality, the increases in rainfall intensity then accompanied by droughts, the politics of building dams, the bill of rights granted to the Great Lake, granting it the same rights as humans or the challenges Somalian nomads, also called rob raac or rain followers are facing due to changes in rainfall patterns.
The undercurrent of all of these topics is what I would like to showcase.
I don’t want to write about water’s societal function or environmental fate, I want to write about its’ beauty. To do so, I scripted a little poem just for the JT readers ☺
Water ushers in melancholy, retrospection, flowers and tomatoes when it rains,
It reshapes earth’s surface when it cascades across solid land,
Carving mountains,
Shaping societies,
Sometimes with a loud rush and roar, in tsunamis,
Other times, quietly and slowly, in politics,
Ultimately,
It is the very substance that links us together,
Only in competition with oxygen, and love.
Its’ sound against a window, how would you describe it?
Its’ morning dew aroma, how would you describe it?
Thank water for turning us, somehow, into bathroom shower-singing superstars!
May our appreciation begin now,
Not once water’s jeopardy is made more apparent to us,
Or our access to water, hindered,
But, here, now, the appreciation starts with an acknowledgment of the beautiful, created world having an element that binds us all together,
The water we have now is the same amount as in the beginning,
It runs the full earth circuit through clouds, rainfall and oceans,
Bouncing from continent, to continent,
Who knows…the rain on your car windshield was maybe someone’s shower across the planet!
So, post-soliloquy, as you continue through your day I encourage you to recall your favorite memory around water, or, you can find yourself a nice JT trail and experience the beauty of a small, babbling brook, perhaps with a new appreciation in the mind and heart.
Happy World Water Day.