By Delila Jahn-Thue
Princess’ 5th birthday party is today. Having run out of sleep, I’ve been up since 5 a.m.
Delila
Chicken defrosts for birthday lunch and butter softens for a bunny cake, I hope. We expect family and are under a storm watch. Today is yet to be written.
Spring calves come steady now with yesterday’s #18 being my stand-out favorite. Princess named him “Diaper Boy.” He’s jet black, except his bleach-white tail, bum and underbelly. Oh incontinent one stands out from his siblings whose bums match the rest of their bodies. Diversity is a glorious gift.
My son has found great meaning trenching water away from the barn toward the culvert. He uses two specialized tools: his favorite caragana stick or a garden hoe. His work is exquisite.
Both younger children help me gather snow and melt water for sunroom storage as my seedlings prefer this to well water. Perhaps after today’s party I’ll pull a rain barrel from storage and fill that too. It doesn’t take much time; plus, saving water is not yet illegal in Canada. The story in many States is different; hopefully their present doesn’t foretell our future. http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html.
Water is precious. I’m often guilty of not drinking enough. Proper body functioning depends on water consumption. Although the race is on for oil and Canada’s environmental laws are muted in hot pursuit, the world sits in a water crisis situation.
“Water scarcity already affects every continent,” states the United Nations http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml
According to Plan Canada; “In some parts of the world, lack of access to clean water is a bigger crisis than armed conflict, leading to 2.2 million deaths and over 4 billion related illnesses every year. With no clean water, children and their families are at risk of disease and death.” Such organizations provide us with opportunities to donate toward water opportunities for the suffering. That’s a good thing. Just like Cancer research donations…right?
Call me a stick in the mud but I think donations are foolish if we continue to ignore how this water got dirty. The natural processes of the water cycle render it clean and good for living things, including human. We shouldn’t have a problem.
But we do. Take for example, the Mississippi River, flowing through 10 states, one of the most polluted rivers in the U.S.
Recently we’ve noticed an increase in foreign investment in Canada. Lots of investment and new farming ventures in Saskatchewan from China in particular. Why?
“The twin problems of water scarcity and pollution in China are a major issue. Not only are they threatening human health and development, but water problems also jeopardize China’s economic plans” The real shortage in the world is not energy. It’s water. http://www.wri.org/publication/content/7833
“China ranks fourth in the world in terms of total water resources, but is second lowest in terms of per capita water resource availability.” Their vast water resources are now toxic. Industry polluted it beyond present technological capacity to clean it. That should scream terror into us. Unbridled “economic development” is equivalent to environmental terrorism. If we’ve truly come of age as a country, it’s time Canadians asked the milestone questions.
In measuring economic growth only in dollar terms, we’re shutting the taps off in Canada too.
We have this wise saying here in the hills: “You’re only ever a few weeks away from a drought in this country.” What are we willing to trade for water? I doubt the water deprived of the world knowingly traded anything. Industry took what it wanted and populations struggle with the consequences of pollution.
I love the feeling of getting ahead. I measure this in debt elimination, progress cleaning a chicken coop or transplanting seedlings. Dollars are not a true measure of value. This week I visited a neighbour, gifting her with seedlings I had in surplus. She surprised me with a jar of fresh cream: progress!
Whipped cream will frost Princess’ cake. When I was five we didn’t buy water in bottles. We drank it from a tap or garden hose. My father swam in the river that meandered through his land. You couldn’t pay me to swim there today, but we ate fish from it when I was small. My kids won’t.
China’s mighty economic machine has its population presently wearing stylish face masks to filter their poisoned aWhere do Canada’s economic leaders direct us? Watching more economically advanced countries like China and the United States, we already know the future of the land on which we stand. Next question: will Canada’s population do some re-directing and change the future?
Delila Jahn-Thue is a teacher, columnist: Living from The Farm and author of Advice Between Kingdoms – How the Hays Moved Trash Mountain (Balboa Press 2012).
She is involved in ecological causes including farmers’ rights, water quality and creating rural recycling opportunities. Passionate about the land, Delila travels to communities and schools sharing awareness of how our daily actions affect the land that feeds us.
NAL encourages you to visit Delila’s website at Livingfromthefarm.com .
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
That reminds me of the little valley in North Wales where I was born, I was born at home in a little cottage on the side of a hill, our running water came from a spring which ran beside our house,we had no electric, just oil lamps and cooking was done on something called a range which also provided heat, a little thing called a hob had a cast iron kettle that always had hot water in it.the year was 1940, the war was already 6 months old.our news came via wireless (radio) the power came from a glass car battery that my brothers would lug down to the smithy for a recharge on their generator. electric did not come to our valley until 1948 years after the war had ended, by then we had moved to Liverpool England which was in the midst of extreme food shortage , we were sending food to our former enemies the Germans.The food rationing lasted until 1955 which has had a huge impact on my feelings towards food and our attitude towards it.I cannot stand wasted food and North American gluttony while a billion people go to bed hungry and thirsty because they had the bad luck to be born in some god forsaken country.
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Dear Jahn-Thue,
Please note that we responded to an earlier encouraging article by Lyman Welch, water quality director for the ‘Alliance for the Great Lakes’. Mr. Lyman Welch pointed us to Jill Jedlicka, the Executive Director of the ‘Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper’ a site with no link as ‘Contact us’. We contacted Great Lakes United, the fourth agency purportedly concerned with water quality.
Now we are trying global WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE, also no ‘Cantact us’ and EcoWatch spear@ecowatch.org
The article was posted on ‘Niagara at Large’ by publisher Doug Draper.
We found the article, as portrayed by Lyman Welch, encouraging in that it tells us that there are people out there that are supposedly trying to preserve and protect our water.
The article seems to call for everyone to do their best to help. That was the same message from ‘WaterSmart’ Niagara and that is just what we did.
http://www.niagararegion.ca/government/initiatives/nwqps/default.aspx
Following the lead of Alexander Davidoff, **a veteran local pollution fighter, who personally paid for the analysis of unanswered toxic pollution of which we tried to apprise the Regional authorities August 22, 2012 of what appeared to have been a serious toxic pollution dump and received, what we believe, is prevarication, obfuscation and distortion.
http://newsalertniagara.blogspot.ca/2012/09/pollution-alert.html
http://newsalertniagara.blogspot.ca/2012/11/watersmart-niagara-how-does-that-work.html
The Niagara Authorities didn’t even follow their own rules: By-Law No. 47-2008
The Commissioner of Public Works will not disclose were the polluted soil was deposited even though it appears, according to the by-law that he has the exclusive responsibility in the matter.
As we said in our response to the Lyman Welch article this has nothing to do with our veracity. We just find it strange that the Niagara authorities remain allusive on the subject.
They tried to have us apply for information through ‘freedom of information’ but we were simply alerting the authorities regarding pollution concerns.
We still have not received a single answer to our simple questions even though we have had 15 Mute Swans die fall 2012 from toxins in their feed in water that pours directly into Lake Ontario.
We have several Sewage lagoons overflowing directly into our lakes and rivers.
Folks, we have a large amount photographic evidence of toxic pollution without resolution.
It’s difficult to believe that other municipalities are not taking the same strange positions of expediency or, heaven forbid, possible malfeasance.
The question is; what if anything will ever be done about it?
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The answer is they don’t give a damn, plain and simple, I look for terrible things to start happening in our Great Lakes when the toxic blue/green algae starts replicating it self., In the year 2011 Lake Erie had very high levels of algae growth and over 30 deaths were attributed to exposure to the algae, Already in Florida 74 Manatee’s died because of the blue/green algae. Ohio found algae had invaded the drinking water via the water treatment plants, carried to inland waters on the feet of ducks. Source. TV and visual at Waverly Beach Fort Erie ,it started early that year, even breathing in the fumes, off the algae can cause botulism, E-coli was also found in the stuff, truck loads of the stuff were removed by volunteers and Town trucks.no body wore any haz- mat gear.
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