October 23, 2010 is the 38th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act.
Water is the heart of all life. It is embedded in all life forms, in all economic, social and spiritual practices across the globe. Disaggregating and disconnecting water from this essential nature is what has led us to chop it up into pieces, think of it as something that can be owned and led to laws and practices that encourage its waste, overuse, pollution and that reinforces class, race and gender inequity because of lack of access.
The global water cycle is broken and is contributing to and being affected by chemical pollution, unheard of and accelerated biodiversity loss, nutrient issues, the hardening of the landscape and desertification, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, estuary and freshwater ecosystem collapse and climate change.
We have sought to solve water, disease, waste and transportation problems in an ad hoc manner. We have created drinking water, waste water, storm water, huge storage, conveyance, irrigation and flood control measures that are predicated on large subsidies which are contributing to the degradation of the places we live, our food supply and are putting basic survival at risk.
A new water paradigm is the path forward. We have to re-think our footprint on the global systems including how we build and re-build our cities and towns, how we produce food, how we get around, where jobs come from and how we deal with waste. Pollution prevention, efficiency, conservation, reuse, doing things locally and in a distributed and decentralized manner are all core principles for moving forward with water and other natural resources.
But until we do this there are many examples of water issues that come to mind that vex humans and the planet;
