SCICON, downstream neighbors & water crisis

The biannual SCICON open house was held Sunday for fifth- and sixth-grade students and their families who came out to tour and enjoy the beauty of the outdoor campus. Staff was on hand to lead tours and answer questions. The facilities, including the lodge, the cabins and the museum of natural history, were open.

If families couldn’t make it due to Super Bowl Sunday celebrations, fifth grade classes get to take a tour including a hike. My class is looking forward to their day trip up to SCICON for their orientation before staying a week as sixth graders.

The study of the watershed and the riparian habitat is of special interest because students love holding a salamander.

New curriculum with nature lessons was unveiled for teachers to use in preparation for their visit.

Paper folded mountain ranges complete with a little added rainfall that funneled down the watershed of the desk model was a favorite with the teachers during their training.

We came from water and we’re 70% composed of water. Yet, clean water sources on the planet are being threatened. In order for our children to have access to clean water, changes must start now. Discussion about the value of water and how lifestyle choices affect it are springing up across the country. Last weekend at a Downstream Water Symposium held in Denver, Colo., participants came from various countries making it an international event.

There they asserted that decisions about local water can’t be made without knowing the downstream affect. According to experts there, the water crisis is reaching critical proportions.

Planetary water is highly sought after yet increasingly soiled. Pesticides and herbicides are creating acid at the bottom of lakes. Mercury levels in fish in the ocean are at dangerous levels.

Radioactive sludge seeped out of the nuclear plants after meltdowns in Fukashima contaminating the ocean near Japan which has since been carried on currents to far reaching countries. These are only a few of the water bodies across the globe in need of cleansing and revivification.

After the Gulf oil spill, people sued BP. Businesses sued BP, but nature has no rights. No one sued BP for the damage done to the water. Dead zones including one 7 miles in diameter were created in the Gulf where nothing can live.

If future generations are to have the rapidly diminishing resource of clean water, it is our responsibility to stop companies from destroying it. Multinational companies are buying the rights to pure groundwater reserves to be bottled and sold at a profit.

Should nature such as water be bought and sold as a commodity?

Indigenous people in Bolivia were insulted by the way the multinational company divided the access to water based on if they could pay or not. The mountain people there demanded not to have to pay for their own water and the government listened.  

Maude Barlow, a previous advisor to the president of the UN about the human right to clean water and sanitation, thinks that water is a sacred commons and a sacred trust that belongs to future generations of all species and the government should be protecting it.

We all know that water runs downhill but there are those that claim that water runs uphill toward the money. We are our own downstream neighbors and if we don’t manage our water well, another river will no longer flow into the sea.  

The practice of “fracking” in oil and gas exploration ruins high quality water, by lacing it with hundreds of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. Millions of gallons of pure water are not just used but are ruined for each frack.  

If we take water out of the hydrological cycle, it won’t be there for our children. We don’t have that much fresh water to spare.  Water conservation takes many forms globally.

Farmers in the highlands of Guatemala and Honduras are being taught how to keep the water on top of the mountains, rather than allowing the tremendous runoff that has occurred with deforestation of the land.

Governmental cooperation to change to methods that are kinder to water is needed so it won’t be permanently ruined. Methods to re-purify this intentionally contaminated water have not been found so it’s left underground, where it may leak out and contaminate other pure water reservoirs.    

The watershed defines the bioregion of a locale. Each bioregion needs to take the larger picture into account before making any local decisions. Respecting the integrity of water as a part of nature is critical.

Students who attend SCICON develop a love of and appreciation for the beauty of all nature including the riparian habitat and the watershed above it. May these students be wise enough to make decisions regarding our water supply that positively affect their children.

Kristi McCracken, author of two children’s books and a long time teacher in the South Valley, can be reached at educationallyspeaking@gmail.com.