I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
Regular listeners to World Ocean Radio will know that I have been in the midst of a multi-part series on “Planning with Water.” The past editions have been both abstract and specific, suggesting water as a center around which a new system of individual behavior and societal organization can be envisioned, constructed, managed, and implemented as the revolutionary change required to move from an exhausted earth to a sustainable ocean for the benefit of all mankind. I have been arguing for an ambitious shift from the realities of the industrial age to the potentialities of a new ecological age wherein humans and Nature mutually, sustainably, and peacefully co-exist. Lofty intent. Hypothetical business.
But here at home in Maine USA, I have also been surrounded by water, not just by encompassing views of Penobscot Bay, but by the piles and drifts of snow from storm after storm that has enveloped our world in walls of snow, and colder and windier and wetter conditions than we have seen for years along on this stretch of ocean coast. It has been indeed “water, water everywhere…”
Until this week, when without warning, our well ran dry. Consider the irony: water everywhere, but suddenly not “a drop to drink.” Nor bathe in, nor flush with, nor cook or clean with. Consider that I had just finished writing about Sao Paulo, Brazil, where 20 million people were faced with a similar catastrophe as a result of indifference, outmoded design, neglected maintenance, corrupt management, increased population, urban sprawl, destruction of the regional rivers and watershed, reduced glacial melt and run-off from the surrounding mountains – further exacerbated by extreme climate conditions of record rains and floods and record drought. Twenty million people, with their water supply reduced to one or two days a week, eventually to be reduced to nothing at all unless otherwise transported from other distant sources to the city. My concern for them was genuine. How could this be? How would that community survive without its most precious water?
Consider the irony, yes; consider then my own concern faced here with dry faucets and toilets that could not flush. Why, how did my water source run dry? What could I do about it? Would I too need to import water? Melt snow? Go without? Move away? Like Sao Paulo, I considered myself “water rich” with a seemingly inexhaustible supply. Suddenly, it was not so.
The search for explanation required action and analysis. Was the well really dry, or was the pump broken or the pipes frozen? Had our consumption patterns changed in some dramatic fashion? Had we allowed our conservation mentality to diminish into some unquestioned, wasteful pattern of use or awareness?
We examined the system, from both directions, from well to spigot, spigot to well, and found a workable pump, no broken pipes, no evident leaks. We did however discover that an outside faucet, buried in snow, had somehow worked open to allow a small but constant flow of water, quietly and almost invisibly drawing down what was stored in the well pipe.
Further analysis lead also to the fact that we had a welcome third party now living in the house, adding normal but nonetheless additional demand on the laundry, plumbing, dish-washing, drinking and cooking needs of the household. And then further still we had houseguests the days immediately prior who had increased showers and other water demand to now five persons consuming without restraint. It was a confluence of small circumstance that incrementally grew to the critical point where demand exceeded supply until that supply was exhausted.
The guests departed. The partial physical cause was revealed and corrected. But most importantly our water consciousness was raised exponentially from complacency to crisis, our habits dramatically revised, and austerity applied to allow the well to regenerate and fill. Which it did, to a level of immense relief. In those few days, however, we lived through the cycle of disruption that is being faced around the world by so many others as our global water sources are diminished, destroyed, and overwhelmed. We learned the lesson first hand, and none of us will ever think about water theoretically again.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
