Water, Water Everywhere

Text by Laurie LaMountain

I’ve been thinking about writing a piece on water for a while now. After all, this is Lake Living, and what are lakes but bodies of water? So while I was preparing for an interview on The Landing School in Arundel, Maine, and came across a link to a TED talk given by the school’s president, Richard Schuhmann, it was the proverbial kick in the pants I needed. The title of his talk was “The Politics of Water.” I’m not one to ignore obvious connections.

“I can go for weeks without eating, but after about three days without water I begin to die,” states Schuhmann. “So it’s no wonder that something of such critical importance, when it’s in limited supply and has to be shared, can become a point of contention.”

Here in Maine, we are lulled into a perceived belief that we live in a region where water is in unlimited supply. In fact, if you look closely at the map of the United States that Shuhmann uses in his talk to identify
areas of imminent drought in this country, Maine is one of the few states that appears unaffected. I emphasize that word because the world is changing rapidly. We need to realize that just because it seems that water is a limitless, renewable resource here in Maine, it doesn’t mean we should devalue it, waste it or give it away . . . and it doesn’t mean it will always be abundant. Whether or not you believe in climate change, Schuhmann makes a very good point when he states that “civilizations on the rise meet challenges squarely, with creativity, with innovation and with bold, brave action. Civilizations in decline meet these types of challenges with fear and denial.”

Since fear is usually a late-game reaction, it’s most likely denial that keeps us quiet about our water here in Maine. We simply don’t want for it. It’s for that reason that
we watch in relative silence as our water is pulled out of our aquifers, pumped into tanker trucks that hold thousands of gallons each, and transported over our very tired roads to eventually be sold in plastic bottles at a cost that is less per gallon than gasoline.

To blame bottled water companies for pumping all this water and making a very tidy profit on a public resource is incomplete. Large-scale agriculture and even a booming craft beer industry are also responsible for hefty consumption. The blame also lies with us as consumers and for not being more informed and activated citizens. As someone I know is fond of saying, it’s not rocket surgery. Science and common sense support the fact that if you constantly draw from a source that is naturally replenished, at a rate that is far greater than nature can keep pace with, you have created an imbalance.

In 2007, just prior to drafting a bill pertaining to bulk water extraction, James Wilfong gave historical context to the issue of water as a public resource in Maine in an
essay posted at onthecommons.org: “Since colonial days, Maine courts have held that surface waters of ten acres or more (‘Great Ponds’) and tidal rivers fall under what is called the ‘public trust.’ This means that ultimate ownership resides in the people of the state; and that the government has a consequent duty to protect these for future generations. Groundwater, by contrast, has been relegated to the ‘absolute dominion’ rule. If there is water under your land, you can pump all you want regardless of the impact upon anyone else.”

While this seems absurdly shortsighted by today’s standards, consider the fact that when the rule of absolute dominion was made, no one could have conceived of our seemingly unslakable thirst for bottled water or the ability to pull it out of the ground at such a voluminous rate. It’s by consequence that we’ve come to understand the intimate relationship between surface watersheds and the groundwater beneath our feet.

In 2007, Wilfong saw his bill passed under the auspices of the Conservation and Natural Resources Committee of the Legislature, and while amendments hampered its authority to place groundwater in the public trust, it did succeed in regulating largescale, commercial water extraction. Placed in the Natural Resources Protection Act, the law now requires a publicly available environmental impact study for any large extraction that provides monitoring, review and evaluation of the data collected, as well as public protection measures. Essentially, what this law does is erode the rule of absolute dominion and place power that wasn’t there before into the hands of the public.

“The question now is control. In Maine, we are in the fight of our lives – for our water resource, our communities, and our Maine way of life. In my view, we don’t have
the time or resources to fight a losing battle over whether water will be bought and sold, because it already is,” states Wilfong in an essay posted at onthecommons.org.

We have the power to get more involved on a legislative level to ensure that even stricter laws are imposed on bulk water extraction. And just as it became unfashionable to wear fur, we have the power to make it unfashionable to consume commercially bottled water. The bottled water industry isn’t about to do it. In a press release issued by the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) in December of 2014, they were happy to quote projections provided by the managing director of research for the Beverage Marketing Corporation, Gary Hemphill, at the IBWA Annual Business Conference in November: “While other beverages
struggle to gain or maintain market share, bottled water is expected to have a 7.4 percent increase in 2014 – that equates to 10.9 billion gallons,” said Hemphill. “Every segment of the bottled water industry is growing and we consider bottled water to be the most successful mass-market beverage category in the U.S.,” he added. “In fact, single serve PET plastic bottled water outperformed all other beverage categories, posting an increase of 8.4 percent.” Sales of bottled water in 2014 are expected to grow to $13 billion, an increase of 6.1 percent from 2013, according to the reportΔ30.

The flip side of this, according to a new Vital Signs Update from the Worldwatch Institute, is that while the world’s fastestgrowing beverage is a boon to the bottled
water industry, it is “a bust for the environment and for the more than 1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean drinking water. Excessive withdrawal of
natural mineral or spring water to produce bottled water has threatened local streams and groundwater, and the product consumes significant amounts of energy in production and shipping. Millions of tons of oil-derived plastics, mostly polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are used to make the water bottles, most of which are not recycled. Each year, about 2 million tons of PET bottles end up in landfills in the United States; in 2005, the national recycling rate for PET was only 23.1 percent, far below the 39.7 percent rate achieved a decade earlier.”

If you don’t believe these statistics regarding PET bottles could be accurate, take a canoe ride on the Saco River in late August. At the same time, spokespersons
from the bottled water industry are calling attention to their environmental commitment to using less plastic in their bottling process—the cap is half as tall.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I want to add that my drilled well was installed at the complete expense of Poland Spring/ Nestlé Waters North America. For those of you who may not know it, Nestlé Waters owns 72 brands of bottled water, including Poland Spring, in 38 countries and is a subsidiary of Switzerland-based Nestlé, the largest food company in the world. I had managed for several years with a 15’ dug well, but when Nestlé Waters North America purchased the land abutting mine in 2005, I was concerned for its future. When I voiced my concerns to the senior natural resource manager for NWNA, he politely asked me what they could do to allay my fears. Did I want a drilled well? I politely declined. Then I thought about it and I talked with friends and family, who encouraged me to take the well before I needed it. In the end, I did just that. Since then, Woodward & Curran, a contractor for PS/NW, has monitored my old dug well on a regular basis. It is no longer in use, but is still considered an indicator of groundwater level fluctuations.

Also by the way of disclosure, I want to point out that Poland Spring advertised in Lake Living several years ago. While that may seem in contradiction to what I’m now saying, I can only offer that I’ve since taken the opportunity to align my business decisions with my conscience.

The issue of water is not a simple one, on either a local or global level. As well as sucking down bottled water when we could save money and the environment by installing a filter on our faucet and buying a reusable water bottle to catch it, we think nothing in this country of watering our lawns and flushing our bodily excretions with drinking water, while a huge percentage of the world has little or no access to clean drinking water. It’s a problem that is not going to go away. It’s a problem that is only going to get bigger. And it’s a problem we all need to act on (see below).

A friend told me she times her rowing sessions on Moose Pond according to the number of Poland Spring trucks that pass every 15 minutes along Route 302. My mother lives right on Route 302 and the only thing that makes her crankier than those Harley motorcycle riders is the number of trucks that rumble past her little house at all hours of the day and night. She started keeping a log and tells me about it . . . often. She also told me I should write an article to let people know how serious an issue this is so that maybe they’ll do something about it. I always (eventually) do what my mother says. I hope you will be encouraged to listen to her as well, since she’s often right.

You Can Make A Difference

While these tips may seem small, if everyone did them it would add up to a BIG difference.

If you haven’t already done it, install lowflow toilets.

When brushing your teeth, don’t run the tap water until you’re ready to spit.

Shave your eight-minute shower to five minutes for a savings of 513 pounds of CO2 per year.* And you probably don’t need to shower daily. It will save your
skin, especially in winter.

Wash your clothes in cold water instead of hot. Washing machines produce over 500 pounds of CO2 a year when run on hot water. Your clothes will be just as
clean and may even last longer when laundered in cold water.* Only wash full loads of laundry.

Thirty-six percent of Americans drink bottled water every day, compared to 72% of Germans and 56% of Mexicans. Japanese (21%), Australians (19%), and
British (16%) are the least likely to drink bottled water daily.*

Run your dishwasher only when it’s full.

Install a filter on your faucet and stop buying bottled water.

Buy a reusable metal or glass water bottle and keep it handy.

Resist the urge to water your lawn for hours. Better yet, turn your lawn into a garden with native flowers and shrubs. Not only will it make watering unnecessary,
it will add an ornamental aspect to your property.

Instead of using a sprinkler to water the garden, hand water plants from a bucket.

*From Marfe’s Ferguson Delano’s book, Earth in the Hot Seat published by National Geographic in 2009