The Water of Life

A friend of mine, recently back from a trip to Calcutta, helped wash dishes after supper one evening. You never saw dishes scrubbed and rinsed with so little water. She said she couldn't use clean water in quite the same way as before her trip, adding offhandedly that she had cut her daily showers to one every two days.

How often have I taken for granted a hot shower on a cool evening, a drink of cold water after exercise, setting the washing machine level on high? I boil spaghetti in huge pots of water and wash dishes with the faucet running. Jackie's careful pouring of one cupful over a rack of plates was an eye-opener.

"Taken for granted" may not be exactly the right phrase, because I have always loved water. A favorite hiking ritual--back when you could drink straight out of Western streams--was to hold cupped hands in the air and watch sunlight catch in the droplets as they poured down my arms and dripped off my elbows. The highlight of summer was to dive deep in a lake, then surface and float face toward the sky, ears full of water and stopped to all voices, dogs, and airplanes. Water is spiritual; I am glad to see such a common yet mysterious substance play a role in Eucharist and baptism at church.

Because water was everywhere in my childhood, I never thought of it in the context of shortage. Other countries (even other American generations) had droughts and water-borne diseases. But not here, not now.

So it is quite frightening to think that something I need at every meal--the water it takes to grow food, to cook it, to wash dishes, to brush my teeth--may be next on the endangered list. We read of reservoirs silting in, gasoline storage tanks leaking into city wells, lead pipes poisoning home water supplies, and of the political battles over water (such as Wyoming's Arapahoe and Shoshone Indians wanting to keep river water for fish populations vs. alfalfa farmers wanting it for irrigation).

We are pumping down our aquifers, the deep slow-moving underground rivers that take thousands of years to recharge. Water tables have become so low that the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts that in less than 40 years the irrigated areas of the Great Plains will have shrunk by 30 percent.

Should there be golf courses in Phoenix, which take millions of gallons of water each day? Should the federal government subsidize water for rice grown in dry California, yet pay farmers in wet southern Texas not to grow rice? Our water use is badly skewed.

Fortunately there is much we can do as individuals to help. Flush the toilet less often. Take shorter showers. Wash fewer loads of clothes. Buy and use fewer household cleaners that at some point go down the pipes; substitute elbow grease and baking soda. Plant a smaller lawn and weed it by hand rather than applying herbicide. (Suburban lawns are a major source of groundwater poisons.) Eat less meat--food economist Frances Moore Lappe notes that the water used to produce 10 pounds of steak equals her family's household water consumption for an entire year. Drink more water--and appreciate it in all its simple glory!

At first glance, this is hardly the stuff of a holiday food column. But please notice this Christmas how many times you touch the water faucet. If you live in snow country, ponder whence those snowflakes come and where they will be come July. Give thanks for rain and say a prayer for those parts of the world that have not received enough this year. Drink a glass of water as if it were the finest champagne. It is, you know.

Carey Burkett was an organic vegetable farmer in Hallettsville, Texas, when this article appeared.