Water is Life

I heard a talk about Water this morning by Reverend Budd Friend-Jones of the First Congregational Church of Crystal Lake. He spoke of the spiritual aspects of water - the life force that all religions somehow honor through their creation stories and important rituals.

Our bodies are about 70% water, as is the planet. Where there is no water, there is no life, for all life on our planet evolved in a water world.

Reverend Friend-Jones suggested that when we look into water, we see ourselves - not just our reflections, but our deeper selves as a people. What does our relationship with water say about us? What kind of people would treat the source of all life on the planet as a waste product or a garbage can?

Call me a savage, but I don't think you need modern religion to be moved by that idea!

Consider the Lakota word for water, "mee-nee." The literal translation of "mee-nee" is "my spiritual quality of life." The Lakota regarded water as the life source, and felt they had been entrusted to care for this Sacred Resource by the Creator!

County 2030 Plan Final Stretch

I try to be an optimist, but sometimes it's really hard to keep my spirits up...

Take the McHenry County 2030 Land Use Plan as an example. The County Board held a series of Public Open House meetings last month that were very well attended. They received over 300 comments in some written form - emails, letters, notes about the maps, even handwritten comments.

But then the Planning & Development Committee - with scant discussion of the comments - voted to send the plan to the full County Board for a vote at its April 20th meeting. They made some changes to the map to reduce the amount of residential sprawl shown (although they decided to maintain the plan for residential development on top of two of the largest remaining oak woodlands in the county, despite TLC's request to amend that portion of the map). However, they kept all of the thousands of acres of commercial/office/industrial land around Marengo, despite three important facts:

1. the areas planned for this type of use are some of the most sensitive groundwater recharge areas in the entire county -- and everyone in the county is dependent upon groundwater for their daily water use (even elected officials).

2. many of the areas so planned are prime agricultural lands - some of the best farmland in the US, and even the world.

3. the agricultural industry is the second largest economic force in McHenry County. And consider that for every person who works on a farm, there are something like 20 people who have jobs because of those farms. Yep, think of the people who clean and process the seed, who manufacture and sell farm chemicals, who manufacture and sell farm equipment, who process the end products from the crops raised on the farms, etc, etc.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one like the idea of my food being raised in the USA, rather than imported from former South American grasslands or the Ukraine (two other prime agricultural regions based on climate & soils). And it kind of honks me off when our elected officials create a farmland preservation commission on the one hand, and then push a policy document aimed at further damaging an already threatened local industry.

That's two handful's of rich, black, humus-y soil in the picture on the left. And that is the reason for this area being such a primo spot for growing crops of all sort. The soil combined with a favorable climate where it rains regularly during the growing season. There may come a day on this planet when wars will be waged over resources like this.

Oh wait, that is already happening in Africa... But it would never come to that here, would it???

Low Impact Development

Recently, I listened to a webinar (a seminar on the Internet) about Low Impact Development (LID for short). It was put on by JFNew and the Delta Institute. JFNew is a native landscaping company, and the Delta Institute is a group that works towards creating a sustainable Great Lakes Region.

So, what is LID? It is all about working with the natural features and qualities of the land to manage stormwater in a non-structural way.

The stormwater management paradigm has long been to build systems to collect and transport away all of the rainwater that falls in a given area. Storm sewers, concrete lined swales, even traditional lawns, are essentially ways to keep water moving away from wherever it fell.

LID means capturing and using or infitrating water closer to where it lands through green infrastructure systems that are actually disconnected.

Try to picture this yard:

1. Rain hits the home's roof, and runs into the gutters, then through the downspout. At the end of the downspout is a rain barrel that collects the first 60 gallons of water for later use watering plants in the garden.

2. Once the rain barrel is full, water then flows out into the yard, where it encounters native plants that absorb some of the water, and slow the flow of the water (unlike a turf lawn that tends to move water quickly).

3. Eventually, some of the water reaches a rain garden - an area of native plants whose deep roots help absorb the water into the ground, and whose leaves help transpire water back into the atmosphere.

4. The yard also has several large trees whose leaves and branches intercept hundreds of gallons of water each time it rains, keeping that water from becoming run-off.

In this scenario, no water ever needs to reach the street and the public stormsewer system.

LID means doing this on a larger scale, and even though it saves money (today and in the future), it is still a very misunderstood, and little used method of handling rain water.

Why? A couple of reasons:

1. It isn't what most public works or consulting engineers learned in school. It is new, and perhaps seen as untested. Let's face it, stormsewers have been around for a long, long time. Builders, engineers, even the average person on the street, have a pretty good idea of how they work.

2. LID involves green stuff, not concrete. How can living things perform as well as -- or better than -- the concrete things we build? I think there is a suspicion of natural systems, because they are harder to quantify and predict. Fortunately, that is changing!

3. Our culture likes control. LID means turning over control of the rainwater to natural systems - to trees and rain gardens. LID means trusting living, growing green things to do their jobs. Yep, they will do what they are made to do whether we tell them to or not!

4. Local ordinances make it harder. Since LID is newer, many local governments do not yet have standards in place to facilitate these systems. Developers often have to fight for the right to use less -- or no -- stormwater piping!

It is time to embrace our natural systems, and to help them do what they are meant to do! It is a peculiar hubris that leads people to believe that they can design something that will operate better than the systems that Mother Earth provided! Call me a savage, but that seems very naive!

Call me Savage

In a previous post, we read the wonderful quote from Chief Seattle. One of the parts that struck me as particularly poetic was his use of the phrase "I am savage and I do not understand..." in reference to the nonsensical things that he observed the white man do.

Well, call me savage, because I don't understand some of those things either.

Like how some people can choose machines at the expense of the natural world.

Or how some people can think that clean air, clean water or safe & abundant food are "special interests." Last I checked, we all had to breathe air, drink water and eat to live. In fact, people can only live without air for a couple of minutes, without water for a few days, and without food for a few weeks (depending on how much ballast they are carrying, I suppose).

But how long could a person live without a car? Without a television? Without a cell phone? You get my point. Billions of people have and will live long and happy lives without any of those things.

Is it so awful to consider the needs, rights and integrity of the natural world when we make decisions about our daily lives? Is that really such a savage idea?

Ask yourself: will my actions enrich the web of life or degrade it?

Thanksgiving Message

This from Chief Seattle (Seatlh), c. 1860

We are a part of the Earth and it is a part of us.

The perfumed flowers are our sisters;

The deer, the horse, the great eagle,

These are our brothers.

The rocky crests, the juices of the meadows,

The body heat of the pony, and man -

all belongs to the same family.

So when the Great Chief in Washington sends words

That he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us.

If we decide to accept, I will make one condition:

The white man must treat the beast of this land as his brother.

I am savage and I do not understand any other way.

I have seen a thousand rotting buffalos on the prairie,

left by the white man who sot them from a passing train.

I am savage and I do not understand how the smoking

iron horse can be more important than the buffalo

that we kill only to stay alive.

Where is man without the beasts?

If the beasts were gone, men would die

from a loneliness of spirit.

For whatever happens to the beasts

Soon happens to man.

All things are connected. This we know.

The Earth does not belong to man;

Man belongs to the Earth. This we know.

All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

Man did not weave the web of life,

He is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web,

He does to himself.

Thank you to retired TLC board member Dale Galloway for sending this lovely statement to me.

Think about this: Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. If we all think of this simple idea when we are making decisions in our daily lives, just imagine the profound effect it could have on the planet? "Will this action strengthen the web or make it weaker?" Keeping in mind that while some actions may strengthen one's personal strand, they will weaken others...

Wow. That whole notion kind of blows me away!

Have a happy, sustainable, nourishing, and web-strengthening holiday!!