“A Clean Glass of Water for Every Appalachian Child” by Helen Matthews Lewis is more than a modest proposal; it is a call to action. Our greatest and most vital natural resource is in danger. Many children throughout the mountains are growing up in homes whose wells have been damaged and whose once-safe natural drinking water supplies are no longer potable. Economic development, poor logging practices, waste disposal, mining and farming have all damaged and continue to threaten both the quality and supply of our region’s water.
At this year’s I Love Mountains Day event in Kentucky, young people had their own meeting with the governor’s office. At that meeting a young girl from the coalfields presented the governor’s office with a jar of cloudy contaminated water from her home tap and carefully explained that the water makes her sick and she cannot drink it; she wants “A clean glass of water.” The child invited government officials to drink the water from her tap–they all declined.
To provide this most basic need to the children of the region, it is necessary for us to develop infrastructure and systems, says Helen Lewis, scholar, activist and community leader, when asked about her vision for the future of Central Appalachia. Lewis’ recommendations may seem simple, but they are profoundly transformative.
What if we organized our economies and our communities in line with the natural order of our surroundings? What if we fully acknowledged the very deep connections between the mountains and the people so richly presented in the recent documentary Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People?
Lewis, the producers of Appalachia and so many others working on transition in Appalachia recognize that the Mountains and their gifts preceded us and our economic systems. If we want to continue to rely on the mountains and their riches to keep us alive and healthy, we must recognize ourselves, our communities and our economies as fundamentally intertwined with the natural mountain systems.
Lewis calls for a multi-disciplinary, community-based, collaborative approach that can teach “ecologically healthy methods of farming, water purification, soil management, composting, recycling, sustainable methods of living on the land and protecting the water.”
These efforts can provide jobs and educate people to recognize and understand our connection to the resources we depend upon. Lewis suggests that every person should know where their drinking water comes from and what it takes to bring it to their home clean and safe for drinking. This awareness alone may fundamentally change how we think about organizing our communities and our economy.
Read Helen Lewis’ full essay as well as other great vision pieces on our “Essays” page.
The four-part documentary Appalachia: A History of Mountains and People is in the middle of its second airing on Kentucky Public Television (check your local listings). The video is available for purchase and may be available through university and public libraries. Appalachia is a great resource for understanding the history of the relationship between the land and the people of Appalachia. The documentary recognizes the central place of water in the story of this region.
For more on what people are thinking and doing to bring clean water to the children of Appalachia visit these sites:
Central Appalachian Network and member group sites
Alliance for Appalachia and member group sites
Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment
Also, check out the excellent NY Times series “Toxic Waters” and Jeff Biggers coverage of it on Huffington Post.
Many national groups are also tracking water in Appalachia. Among them are the following:
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.grist.org/
http://www.sierraclub.org/
