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The Wonder of Fresh Water
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by Dr. Irené Novaczek
Institute of Island Studies, Prince Edward Island
As a contribution to the understanding of the many facets of water in the ecological justice analysis, KAIROS asked the notable environmental scholar, Irene Novaczek, to write an article focusing on the ecology of water. Irene is a world expert on seaweed and other marine life; she is a research associate at the Institute of Island Studies, University of PEI; works with a women's co-operative, Women in Support of Fishing; and with many local development projects in the South Pacific. She has received numerous scholarships and awards. Her reflection comes from a deep concern about the spiritual, moral and ethical, as well as the environmental challenges we face as an Earth Community.
The Limits of Fresh Water
At the birth of our planet, as swirling gases collapsed to form,
first molten rock and then the hardened shell we recognize as earth,
molecules of water precipitated out onto the cooling surface of
the earth to form the oceans that cover three quarters of our “water
planet”. Each billions-year old molecule of water circulates
endlessly, through the bodies of saints and sinners, mosses and
mushrooms, fishes and fowl. This is the water that is within and
around each of us. Living plants absorb and then release water as
vapour into the air. A single corn plant, containing perhaps 2 liters
of water, will transpire 200 liters of water as it grows to maturity.
Animals, too, expel water vapour into the air as they breathe. When
they die, animals and plants release their water back to the earth.
Some seeps through the soil to join the underground rivers in deep
rock formations that we call aquifers. Some drains away to rivers
and runs to the sea, or is evaporated up into the clouds and falls
again as life-giving rain. Thus, we are all part of what we call
the planet’s water cycle.
The water we have in circulation on the surface and in the shallow soils of the planet is all we will ever have. There are no new sources of water; it does not rain down from outer space, nor can it spring anew from any natural process on earth. Moreover, precious little of the planet’s water is fresh and therefore potable. Of all the water on earth, more than 97% is salty. Just over 2% is bound up in the polar ice caps, and 0.6% lies in the earth, half of which we can reach and extract with wells. A mere 0.009% is fresh water that lies on the surface of the earth in ponds, lakes and rivers.
Water as an Ecosystem
Water seems a simple thing: one atom of oxygen linked to two of
hydrogen. H2O. But the unique chemical properties of water make
it a miraculous, life-sustaining liquid. Many animals can go without
food for weeks but just a few short days without water results in
death for all but the most specialized desert dwelling animals.
Because of its unique chemistry, water can dissolve a wider array
of other substances than any other liquid, including the oxygen
essential for fishes, the carbon dioxide essential for water plants
and the many salts that must be absorbed by land plants to build
their tissues. These plant tissues then feed a multitude of animals,
including ourselves.
Water is not only sustenance for living things; it is also an essential habitat – the home to myriad life forms. It fills our streams and rivers, lakes and oceans, providing support and protection for all creatures that swim through the water column, crawl along the bottom or cling to the microfilm at the interface of water and air. It fills the small spaces between grains of soil, nurturing the worms and microflora that tend the health of the soil, making it possible for us to grow food crops. It forms minute pools cupped between the leaves of plants where tiny amphibians, water insects and microbes live and reproduce. Wherever water is, even in sulfurous hot springs, there are plants and animals uniquely suited to live in it.
Naturalists have long been fascinated with the diversity and energy of fresh water wildlife but for most ordinary citizens, this drama is invisible. In her book Watershed Red (1981), PEI nature writer Kathy Martin writes “Mosquito eggs hatch into hungry larvae which attach themselves to the surface of the pond and eat anything that comes close enough to be ingested. Damsel flies enthusiastically gobble up water fleas or young mosquitoes; but if they are not careful, they fall into the clutches of the ferocious diving beetle. A male three-spined stickleback warily eyes these “edibles” above and around him, but always must be on guard to avoid the attack by the swift and accurate beak of the great blue heron.”
Fresh water habitats and the vital web of life they sustain are critical elements in the cycle of use and reuse of fresh water. Bogs nestled in watersheds act as sponges, absorbing and holding rainfall, then releasing it gradually to the thirsty brooks, trees and meadows downstream. Sphagnum moss, bulrushes, sedges and other water-loving plants are much more than beautiful additions to landscape, nesting places for waterfowl and food sources for small animals; they also actively remove heavy metals and excess minerals from sources such as mine seeps and acid rain. In addition, marshes and bogs filter out and trap eroded soil and silt that would otherwise smother the salmon spawning beds, the deep pools where trout cool themselves in summer, and the clams and oyster reefs in the lower estuary where a river greets the sea.
Water Quality in Decline
As miraculous as water is, as ingenious and resilient the water
dependent life forms of earth, this intricate balance of water and
life is vulnerable; in these days, it is in absolute peril. The
problem is that those same chemical properties that allow water
to sustain life also make it a useful medium for many chemical processes
that fuel human economies and make our lives comfortable. As a result,
we pollute water with fertilizers, pesticides, landfill leachate,
petrochemicals, heavy metals, nuclear waste and solvents. Much of
this happens beyond the sight and ken of most ordinary citizens,
but it is done on our behalf.
For our convenience, rivers are purposefully abused as dumping grounds for urban factory effluents, storm drains and sewage. In New Brunswick, government research underway has revealed that sewage is not simply organic waste, a form of food for filter feeders and bacteria, but a complex brew of potent cleansers, toxins and pharmaceutical drugs flushed down toilets and sinks on a daily basis. These include poisons so potent that vanishingly small amounts (micrograms per liter) have profound effects on the vulnerable young of water creatures. One such chemical is nonyl phenol, an emulsifier found in a multitude of consumer goods, from cleansers to car tires to pesticides. Like most of what we use and dispose of, nonyl phenol is not necessary to our well-being. Hormones in birth control pills, and Prozac and other drugs eliminated from human bodies also find their way through sewage treatment plants and into rivers. These chemicals and drugs disrupt the normal growth, behaviour and reproduction of river creatures, including the salmon, trout and shellfish in rivers as well as lobsters, crabs, clams and fishes in estuaries and nearshore marine waters. Scientific findings in Europe and North America increasingly point to sewage in rivers as a fundamental cause of diminishing fish stocks and increasing rates of malformation and bisexuality in fishes.
Often, the industrial activities that destroy fresh water seem profoundly shortsighted and unethical as well as unnecessary. Did you know that in 2006 the Canadian federal government amended the Metal Mining Liquid Effluents Regulations to permit mining companies to use living freshwater lakes as disposal pits for toxic mining waste – starting with Trout Pond, Newfoundland? Lakes are not required in the process of extracting minerals; they are simply “cheaper” than engineered tailings ponds, and allow mining to proceed more rapidly. Are you aware that in western Canada, oil companies that provide the raw materials for our fuel, plastics and pesticides purposefully inject massive volumes of ground and surface water into marginal oil and gas wells to help push out the last barrels of petroleum from those wells? Water is also used for steam extraction of oil from the massive western Canadian oil sands. Between 2 and 4.5 barrels of water is consumed for every barrel of oil produced. Various industries that produce toxic waste frequently propose the disposal of highly dangerous substances by injection into deep wells. By such means, we are polluting not only our surface waters and shallow aquifers, but also those very deep underground basins that we may have to depend on for future fresh water.
We humans contrive even to assault waterways from the air! Emissions from fossil fuel burning power plants, smelters, incinerators, cars and homes, the stuff of smog and acid rain, are transported around the globe and more often than not come down over water. For decades, lakes all across eastern Canada have been dying from mounting acidity, their crystal clarity signalling not some pristine condition, but an absence of life. Where fresh water fishes do survive, they carry levels of mercury – a component of acid rain – that render them unfit for human consumption. Pregnant women are warned not to eat Canadian freshwater fish because it will harm their unborn children. But what of all those other mothers? The mothers of mink, beaver, heron, sparrow – all those creatures who cannot dig a deeper well or buy clean water encased in a plastic bottle?
Decades ago, in 1962, writer Rachel Carson asked the question that our society has yet to answer and take responsibility for. In Silent Spring she wrote: “Water must also be thought of in terms of the chains of life it supports – from the small-as-dust green cells of the drifting plant plankton, through the minute water fleas to the fishes that strain plankton from the water and are in turn eaten by other fishes or by birds, mink, raccoons – in an endless cyclic transfer of materials from life to life. We know that the necessary minerals in the water are so passed from link to link of the food chain. Can we suppose that poisons we introduce into water will not also enter into those cycles of nature?”
It is painfully evident that Carson’s fears were well founded, and our children will reap the consequences. On a planet where it is estimated we are driving to extinction more than 3,000 species a year, half of all wetlands have disappeared under ploughs, roads and coastal developments. Birds that depend on wetland habitats are in decline and an estimated 20% of all species of freshwater fishes are already lost or at risk. Some of the greatest loss has been recorded among fresh water species in North America, where imperiled life forms include 48% of all known mussel species, 23% of snails, 33% of crayfish, 21% of fishes and 26% of amphibians. Frogs, newts and salamanders, those water dwelling denizens whose bodies are sheathed in sensitive skin capable of absorbing all sorts of chemicals from water, are rapidly disappearing. Where marshes and riverside reed beds still cling to existence they are increasingly silent, lacking the cacophony of bull frog and spring peeper. At this rate, our grandchildren will grow up in a world bereft of these water voices. All they will have will be television images and recordings where the voices of extinct waterworld creatures are commercialized to provide soothing “nature sounds”.
As noted above, our misuse of fresh water is also felt in the ocean, and especially in enclosed bays and straits. Although the major nearshore dead zones appearing on the face of the planet lie in the Gulf of Mexico, off India and in Europe, Canada is not immune. For example, in 2005 the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, faced with the decline of many inshore marine species, was forced to admit that the central Northumberland Strait in the southern Gulf of St Lawrence had reached a state of advanced ecological distress. The Gulf of St Lawrence, the precious inland sea which, in 1973, was hailed by Professor M.A. Loutfi of McGill University as the most productive marine region in Canada, has more recently been described by DFO scientists as a particularly diverse and vulnerable ecosystem. Yet there has been no serious effort to protect even the most sensitive of Gulf habitats from pollution, whether from land use, shipping, petroleum development, mining, cruise ship traffic or any other source. The collapsing Strait fisheries, because they have economic impacts, have precipitated a significant investment in public consultation and research that will hopefully result in remediation efforts and changes to the resource management system. But the pronouncements of concern ring hollow against the background hum of industrial activity that is characteristic of our human-centered consumer society. I predict that the critical factors in the decline of this complex, formerly productive fishing ground will go far beyond overfishing; they will include 1) the pollutants released into fresh and marine waters; and 2) climate change.
The True Cost of Food
About 70% of all water used by humans is dedicated to agriculture,
22% to industry and the rest to municipal water supplies. In the
growing of food at an industrial scale, we humans unremittingly
attack water as habitat, polluting fresh water and dismantling the
web of life that lives within it. For example, on Prince Edward
Island throughout the 1990’s and into the new century, farm
pesticides washed into streams have caused repeated fish kills.
The bodies of trout floating belly up in the streams of this province
are signals of much deeper and wider devastation. What stills the
flashing colours of a brook trout also kills the freshwater shrimps,
crabs, and caddis fly larvae and eliminates the merry water skaters.
Poisoned fish flesh lures eagles and raccoons to feed and be poisoned
in their turn. Death flows relentlessly from the tributaries into
the lower reaches of the river and on into the sea. Clams in the
estuaries develop cancer-like diseases. Meanwhile, politicians and
economists argue the economic necessity of subsidizing toxic and
unsustainable agricultural systems.
Industrial agriculture also releases fertilisers into the Island’s environment. Nitrates and phosphates leak into the underlying groundwater, from where they seep into rivers and streams, or are entrained with eroded soil washed into ponds and streams when rain hits exposed ploughed land. This is especially so where soil management is poor and where soil tilth has been impoverished through the prolonged use of agrochemicals and heavy machinery. The resulting cascade of ecological troubles runs with the river all the way to the sea where algae, stimulated by excess fertilizers, rapidly grow and reproduce. Soon they die, drop to the bottom and begin to rot, a process that removes oxygen from the water, triggering the death of bottom dwelling fishes and shellfish. Eroded soils smother riverine fish spawning beds and the shellfish beds in the estuaries. Once in the sea, mobile sediments are washed alongshore, sometimes dropping out over rocky bottom and fouling the habitat for other creatures such as Irish moss, kelp and lobsters which require clean, hard surfaces to live on.
Gluttony and Waste
Not only water quality but also the quantity of clean, fresh water
available for human use is diminishing across North America. At
the same time, human demand for fresh water has tripled in the past
50 years. Often, high and unsustainable levels of water extraction
are carried out in support of intensive livestock production. Growing
meat consumes and pollutes much more water than growing plant protein.
Simply by adjusting our diet to one richer in vegetables and grains,
we could reduce fresh water use by up to 40%, while also reducing
the ill health and medical costs associated with heavy meat consumption,
and leaving a bit more water in the environment to support wildlife.
Over-pumping of groundwater for agricultural use has caused the water table – the level underground where you can find fresh water – to decline over vast areas of North America. Where we persist in drilling ever deeper, higher volume wells while also running heavy machinery over agricultural land, the ground can be compressed. Then, the spaces between particles collapse and the aquifer becomes incapable of absorbing and holding water. These lands are doomed to become deserts as their underlying rivers are drained and compressed beyond recovery.
In many parts of the world, including North America, there is massive irrigation to allow agriculture on relatively arid land. Irrigation is often supported by damming rivers – a practice that in itself causes widespread ecological damage. Macro-scale irrigation is a wasteful practice through which a large proportion of the water evaporates or leaks away instead of being captured by growing crops. Where irrigation involves water taken from deep groundwater, this contains more salt than is found in normal rainwater. Over time and with repeated, unnecessarily massive irrigation, salts build up in the soil. Eventually, traditional crops can no longer grow, and the land must be abandoned. Even after a hundred years, mother nature cannot restore such saline pans to life.
Even our seemingly innocent extraction of water from wells, rivers
and lakes to provide drinking water to towns and cities is mismanaged
to a point of threatening ground water supplies. An estimated 40%
of all water pumped to urban North America is lost through leakage
from water lines. Thus is precious, clean water spilled out to percolate
through contaminated urban soils. We humans seem to view water as
our “resource” alone, forgetting that we must share
it with all the other species on earth. As our supplies of clean
fresh water dwindle, so also must the access to clean water for
all other species dwindle, leaving them short not only of water
to drink, but of habitats in which to live.
Fresh Water and Climate Change
Looming shortages of clean fresh water worldwide are a cause for
deep concern, not least because of the potential to spark political
conflicts and wars. Another cause for deep concern is climate change.
These issues are related in fundamental ways. Climate change has
been triggered by the same kinds of human activities that have imperiled
fresh water: the burning of fossil fuels, the release of other greenhouse
gases, the clearcutting of forests and the disruption of grasslands
for agriculture. Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and chlorofluorocarbons
generated by human industry have accumulated in our atmosphere,
trapping the sun’s energy and raising the temperature of the
planet. This trend is inexorable and, for at least the next 50-100
years, impossible to stop. Dramatic efforts taken now to reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases will not save us or our children from
the short term impacts of climate change, so we must perforce learn
how to adapt and to salvage what we can of the earth’s remaining
species and habitats for future generations. A critical component
in this effort will be the protection of fresh water and wetland
habitats.
The changing climate is bringing rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. Our past abuse of freshwater ecosystems has increased our vulnerability to these changes. Nature provides insurance against the flooding and erosion associated with climate change. This insurance is the coastal wetlands that absorb wave energy and hold together soils. Economists have calculated that each hectare of living wetland provides services to human society that may be valued economically at tens of thousands of dollars a year. Yet, more than half the world’s wetlands - those essential sponges and filters that protect and sustain us - have been destroyed: drained, in-filled and built upon. All along the coast of the Southern Gulf of St Lawrence, for example, salt marshes, coastal bogs and eelgrass meadows are in rapid decline. As they perish, human infrastructure becomes increasingly vulnerable to storm surge, flooding and erosion.
Because of the interconnection of all things, climate change also poses additional threats to fresh water and its wildlife. Indeed, climate change will unfold largely through changes in the cycling of water. There will be changes in patterns of rainfall, bringing increased summer droughts and fires, especially in central and western Canada. Rain, when it does fall, will fall with greater intensity, increasing soil erosion and the movement of silt and toxins into fresh water bodies. Winter snowfall will diminish as climate change kicks in, leaving ploughed fields more vulnerable to winter wind erosion and requiring the planting of winter cover crops. As climate change intensifies, moving to sustainable farming practices and replacing wasteful mass irrigation with micro-irrigation are urgent priorities.
Less snow and shrinking northern glaciers will also mean a reduction in the spring melt that maintains the water level of Canada’s ponds, lakes and rivers. Already our Great Lakes – repository of a full 20% of the planet’s fresh surface water – are shrinking. Lower water levels in streams combined with higher summer temperatures means the water will be too warm and too shallow to support those fishes that require deep, cool pools for life and reproduction. To save fresh water ecosystems we will need to do more than stop the pollution and wastage of water. We must also rehabilitate habitat, for example by planting trees to provide shade along the edges of all waterways. And yes, this means giving up our cottage shoreline properties and cherished viewscapes to serve these more important purposes.
The recycling, reuse and recovery of water by industry, and alternatives to the use of water for disposal of human wastes are other critical priorities in the list of climate change adaptations. As rivers shrink, any pollutant dumped into them will end up being more concentrated and more deadly to all life in the rivers and the sea. Already, scientists in Europe have documented the extensive die-off of shellfish beds along the coasts of France and Italy – a consequence of ever-warmer river waters bringing heavier loads of fertilizers and bacteria to marine habitats. We can, and must, stop the dumping. Technologies and processes already exist for this transition, awaiting the public concern and political will that can ensure their application. Lacking this will to act we can only expect that people in rural Canada who depend on forestry, fisheries and farming will suffer first and most, together with the wild things that share this space. Urban Canadians may be somewhat buffered but over time will also suffer impacts of climate change, water shortages and in-migration of environmental refugees from within and beyond Canada’s boundaries.
This all makes for very grim reading but I hope you can see that these are problems that we have made with our own hands. Human creativity and will needs only to be redirected and we can undo much of the damage that has been wrought. Indeed, there are watershed groups, municipalities, businesses and international bodies such as the International Joint Commission (which has reduced pollution in the Great Lakes system) that have already made significant progress in water protection. We can look to jurisdictions in Europe which, in many instances, have already banned particularly dangerous and unnecessary chemicals and practices and invented technologies that can help Canada come to grips with our water and climate change challenges. It will not be easy. Canadians will have to examine their priorities, sort out needs from wants, and sacrifice elements of personal life style for the greater good of all species. We will have to work urgently and with unprecedented co-operation across all sectors of society, not only to change our habits but, more importantly and profoundly, to change our minds, to rediscover the wonder of fresh water.
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