“Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.”
Do you remember these lines from your school days? They’re from the famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
These lines came to mind as I was writing this first column about Water Matters.
Certainly here on the Olympic Peninsula we are surrounded by water: the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound and Hood Canal. Since we obviously don’t get drinking water from this source (unless we were to have desalination plants), where do we get our drinking water from and do we have enough?
These are the kinds of questions more and more people around the world are asking.
I have lived many places, on land and at sea, where water has been and is a major concern. My husband and I lived full time aboard two different sailboats on the East Coast, neither of which had water makers so we know how precious water is. We lived on our first boat, a monohull, for three years in Key West in the Florida Keys during the winters, and on Cape Cod Bay and the Chesapeake Bay during the summers.
Our second boat was a catamaran that we lived aboard while cruising from Maine to Florida. On land we have lived through serious drought years in Florida, Arizona, California, Hawaii and now Washington.
Whether it was on land or at sea, water has been a major interest for me. Not as an expert though, as I am no water expert. Instead I am a curious, interested citizen that likes to rummage around water issues because I know — we all know — that we must have water to live.
A year ago my husband and I moved to Sequim with its cool, fresh air, healthy organic farms, awe-inspiring lavender fields, magnificent Olympic Mountains, polite children, friendly retirees, a good variety of commercial outlets, community-supported cultural programs, peace and quiet. We loved the “Blue Hole” that would give us “Sunny Sequim” days.
However, we also knew that Sequim is a prairie that — but for irrigation — would still be a prairie. Last winter we were dazzled by the snow on the Olympics. What beauty! But it was a passing beauty as the snowpack registered at zero and quickly melted, leaving irrigators and fish behind.
With no snowpack, my attention turned to other water resources: the aquifers (groundwater), reclaimed water and stormwater. I started writing informally about these issues in my blog: “Sequim’s Water” at www.sequimswater.com.
As a former columnist with the Arizona Daily Sun, northern Arizona’s largest paper, I proposed this column about water to the Sequim Gazette. In this column I will poke around water issues that may be critical to this area.
A real wild card is Mother Nature. If it snows this winter — and the forecast is not encouraging — giving us a robust snowpack, we’ll all be filled with relief and gratitude. But even if we have plenty of snow, we’ll still need to look ahead to what a warmer planet is going to bring us: even less snow.
Then what? I believe we’ll all want to participate in answering this question as we meet in our homes, schools, businesses, churches, neighborhoods and in our civic and governmental groups. Please join the discussion.
Jane Iddings is a retired attorney/mediator, university teacher, newspaper columnist and world traveler. She invites you to e-mail her at jane.iddings@gmail.com, to read her blog at sequimswater.com and to join her for a cup of tea to discuss Water Matters.
