Local water wells polluted with perchlorate, Lake Mead and the
Colorado River are too says the Morgan Hill Times. A plume of
contaminated water originating in Morgan Hill flows south under
residential homes towards Gilroy.
Local water wells polluted with perchlorate, Lake Mead and the Colorado River are too says the Morgan Hill Times. A plume of contaminated water originating in Morgan Hill flows south under residential homes towards Gilroy. Industrial pollution has surfaced years after plant closure to harm our water supply. It’s a common occurrence, only this time it’s literally in our backyard.
Each day we discover something new about America’s water. We’ve come to understand and even accept that much of it is unsafe to drink. No hiker today travels into the back country without a water purification device, and water filtering systems are much more than just an option in our homes but a necessity to guard against an ever-growing list of carcinogens. We are purifying our water as never before from the heartland to our ocean shores not in needed volumes and not at the source but drop by precious drop in today’s homes.
Who is drinking tap water today? Bottled water is found on the store shelves like milk and dispensed from machines like soda. Many no longer trust our water.
Today, much of southern Santa Clara Valley is drinking bottled water and there is no assurance that crops or animals are safe. Is anyone concerned? Unless you are directly affected, you’re not. Sadly we’re getting use to it and we settled for bottled water and filtering systems to protect us, so we think. We’ve become familiar with the term – “below allowable limits” supposedly to give us comfort only to find out later that the limits have changed. We do not know the longterm effects, and we do not know the accumulative affects of 4 ppb of this and 100 ppb of that. We just don’t know, and we should not presume any of it to be safe.
All of this I am afraid comes at a price – a decline in fish, wildlife and perhaps our own health. Who can tell us what’s happening deep in the sea? Much of it is unseen like the plume of perchlorate that sneaks underground only to surface years later in our homes. Only then will the reality have us looking. By then it could be too late for we don’t know as of yet how to pump and clean deep flowing aquifers where toxins can permeate layer upon layer of sedimentary rock.
Yet I believe that it could have been prevented by following a little common sense – if it does not belong there, don’t put it there – don’t dump it, bury it or spill it. Simple?
There is a lesson in all of this. America must protect all of its resources, most importantly its water and air, and elect good leaders to keep it pure and use it to the good health of man and fish a like. Where water is tainted, it must be cleaned. Where water is used, it must be conserved.
The key to it all is prevention. We must have effective water conservation and preservation policies at the national and local levels. Agencies empowered to ensure our water’s quality must have laws and funding to protect. Though some would say no, who would you trust? Would you trust businesses to monitor themselves? Our courts are full of those trusted and ethnically bound to follow laws. Wolves can never watch the flock, and it’s as simple as that.
Change is coming, it’s nothing like we have ever seen before and America’s health is at stake. The Republican leadership is poised with its majority in the House and Senate, to overturn a number of environmental safeguards, and suspend and/or eliminate regulations that protect us. They will shift funding away from research and reduce funding to regulatory agencies making it impossible for them to test for compliance, and enforce laws.
In an unprecedented move only last week, the Bush administration sided with big money and the big automakers to suspend state laws aimed to improve and maintain California’s air quality. Hypocrisy abounds in a party whose platform stood for state’s rights.
From all appearances money buys ideology, too. We are drilling for oil in our national monuments while rivers and streams such as the Delaware remain fouled and unfit for man or fish. Corporate greed has consumed the Republican Party which appears to be willing to risk our health for the dollars placed in their campaign vaults.
We are in harm’s way, and if we do nothing, mother earth will certainly take care of things in a manner and at a price we surely can not pay. But there is something we can do and that is to write. Write this White House.Write this Congress.
Write to our Congressman Richard Pombo of Modesto, even though he voted to divert water in the Klamath River resulting in the death of tens of thousands of salmon, and even though he has one of the worst environmental voting records in Congress. Tell them you’re not supportive of Republican efforts to undo the conservation and environmental policies we have in place today. Think about doing something and doing it soon before you reach for that next bottle of water. Everything is at stake and everything must be done
Contact Congressman Richard Pombo, 2495 W. March Lane, Suite 104, Stockton, CA 95207, Tel: (209) 951-3091, Fax: (209) 951-1910, rp****@ma**.gov
Mark Grzan is a Morgan Hill resident who has been active in city government. The Board of Contributors is comprised of local writers whose views appear on Tuesdays and Fridays.
