Today when I turn on a tap in the morning at our home along Puget Sound, I let it run a while before I drink. This is a habit I picked up in the Southeast and Southwest in case there might be any lead in the pipes, although our water was so hard in New Mexico, I doubt there was too much of a problem. But the thought haunts me that I am privileged to waste water, while many, if not most, people on this stressed planet do not have that luxury. They drink what the have available, polluted, heavy metal-laden or not. Water is in my view sacred, if anything is.
This diary begins a series of four diaries on the old “elements.” We know now that these are not elements. Water, for example, consists primarily of one Oxygen and two Hydrogen atoms (both of which are elements), plus various other compounds as impurities, such as the combination of salts in salt water, and in many cases pollutants. That said, the four old “elements,” Air, Earth, Fire and Water, will serve well as symbols of the required necessities of life on this planet.
I start with water because as a long-time South-westerner I developed a strong attachment to this scarce resource (See my diary on desert water at www.dailykos.com/...). I am now living in the Pacific Northwest, but water is still an issue, especially drinking water, although not as much as it was in New Mexico and Arizona. Here the streams have been damed and are often polluted, and even Puget Sound, that vast southern part of the Salish Sea, is stressed. Yet many of us in the United States worry more about money than water, as is well illustrated by the current difficulties at Standing Rock.
The slogan “Water is life” used by the demonstrators at Standing Rock is so much of a truism as to be overlooked by those requiring quick profits in the present year. They often act as if water was an unlimited resource. It is not! In fact fresh water that is even remotely drinkable is limited to just 2.5% of earth’s water supply. Of that, nearly 70% is tied up in glaciers and ice caps (See: water.usgs.gov/...) and much is actually undrinkable. On top of this the glaciers and ice caps are to a large degree melting into the oceans, making that source of fresh water much less available.
The chemical structure of water, H20, is probably the most generally known formula for a compound, and water is indeed a compound. Many people, while knowing its chemical formula, do not recognize it as “dihydrogen monoxide,” which led to the famous practical joke of trying to get people to sign a petition banning it (See: www.lhup.edu/… and en.wikipedia.org/...) Some apparently did sign, causing this case to be a learning opportunity in critical thinking.
The chemical structure does give water an almost unique (several elements and compounds do this, but it is not common) characteristic — it is lighter when it freezes. This explains why ice floats and ponds and lakes do not become solid masses of ice. If it became heaver with freezing it would likely make life impossible.
Water can be, of course, quite dangerous, but it is a very necessary danger. A human can last far longer without food than they can without water. A couple hiking in White Sands National Monument lost their way and died of thirst in a few hours. However, you can also drown in the desert, as a flash flood a few years ago in Pima County, Arizona, demonstrated (See: tucson.com/...)
The largest repository of water is in the earth’s oceans, with 97.5%. These are huge areas of the planet and it is not surprising that they were thought to be inexhaustible sources of fish and other sea food. However, humans in their cleverness have managed in a relatively short time to have fished some areas almost out and endangered some once common species.
Since we ourselves are made up of about 65% water (as much as 73% or as little as 45%, it varies depending on age, weight and sex — (See: en.wikipedia.org/....) we have a vested interest in hydration and many people cary water bottles with them. Dehydration can, as noted above, quickly kill. It is for this reason that, along with our needs for either rain or irrigation to water our crops and animals, our need for water as coolants in power plants and to mix with chemicals, and a number of other uses, including for wildlife, we really cannot afford to be neutral on the subject. Water wars are fairly common, but these days are mostly fought in the courts.
In fact water is perhaps the most underrated substance of our age. Without it life is impossible. Yet we carelessly pollute it, waste it, and build where it can damage our structures. Global warming is making the seas rise, but it is also depleting oxygen and acidifying the oceans. Waterborne diseases, such as cholera and typhoid, as well as other bacteria, are a danger in much of the developing world. They used to be prevalent in the United States (and could be again) and cholera was a bigger killer on the Oregon Trail than all other factors (See: www.nps.gov/... )
To have a dependable source of water and for the overall health of the planet, it is necessary to protect watersheds, which feed streams and rivers, estuaries and salt marshes. Much of this is in the form of melt water from mountain snow packs. Underground storage in the form of aquifers needs to be replenished, but many (See: www.scientificamerican.com/...) if not most, are under severe pressure because of wells and pivot irrigation, and because of years without adequate runoff from snow-capped mountains. Along Puget Sound, there used to be a series of estuaries involving clear-running salmon streams and rivers that led through freshwater marshes into coastal salt marshes. These, and others around the world, are among the most productive ecosystems known. Not only do they provide a flow of water into the sea for salmon runs, but the surrounding trees and shrubs, and the freshwater and saltwater marsh plants and microorganisms sequester Carbon Dioxide and produce Oxygen (more about this under “Air.”) (See: Teal, John and Mildred Teal, 1971. The Life and Death of the Salt Marsh, for a dated but useful exposition on East Coast US salt marshes.) At this point I must make an observation that my categorizations (Air, Earth, Fire and Water), or any other such compartmentalization belie the huge complexity involved. As Von Humboldt observed around 1800, everything is connected to everything else. Nothing exists independently. The food chain is actually a food web and water is at the very center as a necessary component.
This is a vast subject and many volumes have been published about it but I would recommend two books on water phenomena written by two authors in the United Kingdom (where they seem to think about such things a lot) — Tristan Gooley’s 2016 tome How to Read Water and Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Wavewatcher’s Companion, published in 2010. They will provide the reader with different perspectives on water than those with which they are familiar.
Water is a magical substance and we take it for granted at our peril.