Sunday, March 16, 2008
We have a lot of fears, here in the richest country in the world.
We’re afraid of a recession, we’re afraid of trans fats, we’re afraid of surging gas prices. We’re afraid of random shootings that cut down brilliant young college students in their prime.
But one thing we haven’t had to fear — until now — is bad water.
We know we can turn on the faucet at any hour of day or night, here in the U.S.A., and get cool, clean water to drink. If we want to get fancy about it, we can climb into our SUV, drive to the store and buy a bottle of water — flavored, if we find the real thing boring.
So when we read the news that maybe there are traces of pharmaceuticals in our water supply, we panic. We debate. We demand a solution — now.
John Rodgers is an environmental toxicologist at Clemson University. Last week, at the height of the water crisis, he offered some simple wisdom.
Yes, he said, we might have things in our water that we wish weren’t there. Research is under way to look at the effects of exposure to some of these substances in minute amounts. Even so, we still have what is probably the safest drinking water on the planet.
“Most of the people in the world are not as fortunate,” he said.
Right on, Mr. Rodgers.
As we’re whining about our drinking supply, we need to consider the water billions of people in developing countries are forced to drink every day.
In the Cambodian village where my youngest daughter was born, there’s no such thing as running water — clean or dirty. No electricity, either. And not a lot of food. The children are barefoot, thin and have the dull orange streaks in their hair that signifies malnutrition.
In the last few years, my husband and I have tried to help the village, partly to say “thank you” for the precious gift of our daughter, but also to try to improve living conditions there, at least in small ways — so that maybe other villagers won’t have to give their babies to an orphanage because they can’t feed them.
We built a community center, which also serves as an open-air school. One family got a new, one-room house on stilts to replace their palm-and-bamboo shack that flooded during the rainy season. A farmer got a cow, to help him plow his rice field. The villagers were happy, and we felt like we’d done some good.
Then I asked the village chief what else his people needed. He didn’t hesitate.
“Water,” was the answer.
Cyclical droughts plagued the area, and wells had gone dry. The chief wanted a reservoir to collect rainwater during the monsoon season. So we paid for an excavator to dig a small lake bed. The villagers helped, hand-carrying baskets of soil away from the hole.
Now they have a year-round source of water. It’s muddy, and water buffalo share it with them, which leads to contamination.
The villagers are happy to have it, though. They boil the water over wood cook fires, smiling broadly.
They know what a blessing water is.
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