4 minute read
Saying Y.E.S. to Nature
Wastelands or Wetlands? Water’s Right to Be
BY PAMELA WALKER
In our increasingly hectic world, things must slow down. The Slow Food movement tried to make us eat local food and to embrace traditional methods of cooking. And now the Slow Water movement is gaining popularity.
Why do we have to slow down water? Because there is too much water in the winter and too little in the summer, because of empty wells and empty aquafers, the floods, wetlands and riparian zones, and because of climate change and worries about the sea level rising.
The Slow Water movement counteracts our present desire to get rid of water as fast as possible. We put “excess” water in storm drains, pipes, culverts and ditches; we pave over streams; we drain wetlands and ignore riparian zones; we build over creeks and streams; sometimes we just fill in watercourses with debris from construction and hope it disappears. Then, at the source of our water, we’ve clearcut forests and now trees cannot hold back the precious component of all living matter, causing sloughs and runoff. And without the trees’ canopy, the snow pack melts too quickly.
The result is our aquafers — whatever they are made of or however deep they are — aren’t replenished as they once were. None of this, we are learning, is good.
We are also learning that when we try and control water, we are actually harming the supply of it. Wetlands are not wastelands. Water won’t disappear; it will come back and flood what we have tried to dry up.
In her book Water Always Wins, environmental journalist Erica Gies, who lives part-time in Victoria, argues that we must/can collaborate with water rather than control it. We can work with local landscapes, climates and cultures, instead of working against them. The Slow Water movement argues for a “fundamental shift in how we think about ourselves, our systems and our world” in order “to understand water and accept it for what it is instead of trying to shape it into what we might wish it to be.”
Not understanding or respecting water is something the New Zealand government has made illegal. In 2017, New Zealand was the first country in the world to give rivers legal rights — just as people have (and corporations have in the US). Some of the rights awarded to rivers are the right to exist, the right to continue to flow and the right to have relationships with rocks.
Addressing the lack of respect for rivers, artists are painting “ghost rivers” onto sidewalks and roads and parking lots to remind people where they used to run.
Ladysmith’s Poet Laureate John Edwards wants to know about one such ghost creek in our area. A tributary of the Nanaimo River, Thomas Creek flows somewhere under the highway, underneath the nefarious Schnitzer Steel, and out through the hay fields into Ladysmith Harbour. But nobody seems to remember exactly where, and that seems very sad.
We can learn to put into place Slow Water principles by making our local governments aware we care about water. We can use less. (Did you know BC residents use more, on average, than residents in any other province?) We can try and slow the water down on our own property so it has time to seep back into the ground and fill our wells. “How?” you ask. Here’s a few ideas:
• Consider paving stones or gravel instead of concrete. Bare, packed soil is not good either.
• Plant trees and bushes on your property. Yes, the trees will drink some, but in time, the roots will hold more water back than they use.
• Put big branches in ditches so as to give water time to seep into the banks.
• Dam up or divert drains so water has time to run into the soil.
• Don’t try and pump water away from your property and think about leaving the beavers alone to do what they know needs to be done.
• Help organizations rehabilitate wetlands and foreshores. Wetlands have the ability to grow upwards, given enough silt, and to stop sea rise.
• Learn more. RDN’s Water to Earth activities on now until April 22 is a great place to start.
