In a Sustainabilty Task Force Meeting on campus the other day, I was alerted to the fact that there is a mysterious brook near some NYU property called Minetta Brook which has disapeared! That's nuts! It is the source of many a blog speculation, but I am blown away!
Mostly I am tripped out by the fact that New York City used to have natural features like that. They tell me it used to be a forest. A forest! I am stoked nowadays when I see plants on fire escapes.Brooks mean that little animals used to poke around foliage and drink from it (I am imagining Bambi obviously)
What do you guys think about this phenomenon? There is some speculation that the stream is likely redirected directly to storm drains, meaning it turns into polluted, unsueable sludge instead of sinking back into groud water reserves. Which is a strike against. But look at that picture of Bambi, and tell me we don't need some more of that around the city.
I have naively, impulsively, enthusiastically decided to enter into a week long movie making competition. I have never made a movie before and I am super pumped.
http://www.campusmoviefest.com/
aaaannnnnddddd if I make a really good one about domestic poverty, I can submit it to win $10,000!
So let's brainstorm bloggers, what are your thoughts about a 5 minute film-able way that water and poverty go together?
Scott Harrison, the
founder of charity:water, is always working on new creative ways to
raise awareness about water issues. In February, Scott teamed up with
twitter to organize a Twestival: the first ever world-wide festival
organized through Twitter! Over 200 cities hosted the event and
collectively raised $250,000 for charity: water. This money will be
used to complete 55 water projects in Ethiopia, India, and Uganda.
His latest act of unbridled creativity included an exhibition of
photographs in NYC's Chelsea Market. Scott prominently placed various
photographs of kids holding bottles of contaminated water and
juxtaposing them with kids drinking clean water. A simple comparison,
yet it speaks volumes about the situation of millions and what we can do to help!
Yellow canisters are strewn about to show what kind of containers
people in Africa use when they walk for miles to a water source. These
containers double as donation boxes and all proceeds will go directly
to water projects! A wishing well is also part of the ensemble and passersby can drop in a coin or two, make a wish, a help bring clean drinking water to communities.
Btw, did you know it's world water week? This whole week we will
be blogging and featuring awesome water-related happenings around the
world.
I met with Debra Anderson and Brian Stewart in McCloud, a small "town" just east of Mt. Shasta.
McCloud
is blessed with an amazing water supply: Water springs flow straight
from the ground, gushing more clean, cold, volcanically-enhanced (!)
water than the community can ever hope to drink.
And that's the problem...
Nestle wants to bottle that water and sell it to people elsewhere in the State.
Well -- the problem is NOT that Nestle wants to bottle the water but the terms under which Nestle wants to do so [Prior posts].
Debra, who is president of the McCloud Watershed Council,
spoke with a mixture of concern and outrage over the handling of
McCloud's water -- worrying that the local population is too enamoured
of a deal that promises the "good old days" [i.e., the company town
security that the saw mill provided] and/or has not considered how
Nestle may choose to interpret a contract [here] that gives it a lot of leeway.
Brian is involved in local politics but spoke as a "general member of the public."
Listen to our one-hour and six minute [23MB MP3]
chat to learn more about how a community of 1,200 people reconciles
political, economic and environmental concerns as it tries to maintain
and improve its quality of life. [By amazing coincidence, a caller
asked about McCloud when I was on KALW a few days later. I was very happy to have enough knowledge to answer his question.]
Bottom Line:
There are costs and benefits to every decision, and McCloud's people
are wrestling with a decision that could enhance or destroy their way
of life.
I've been getting updates from the friendly folks at www.useitwisely.com around water resources and the most recent tweet I found was the "100 Ways to Conserve" list that they compiled most recently.
I must say, I truly appreciate these helpful hints and here are a few that I haven't heard in the past:
#10: For cold drinks keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator instead of
running the tap. This way, every drop goes down you and not the drain.
#17: Collect the water you run to rinse off veggies and water the houseplants with it.
#28: Put food coloring in your toilet tank. If it seeps into the toilet bowl
without flushing, you have a leak. Fixing it can save up to 1,000
gallons a month.
#61: Next time you add or replace a flower or shrub, choose a low water use
plant for year-round landscape color and save up to 550 gallons each
year.
#75: Drop your tissue in the trash instead of the toliet and save water every time.
I think personal sustainbility is KEY to combating issues like water usage, global warming and others- however, i think there needs to be a closely related effort to monitor industry and agriculture when it comes to water usage and how better to have those facets of American life recognize their usage and how to better manage it. To do this without "blue washing" is key and necessary when it comes to the sustainability of water on this planet. These industries use 80% of our fresh water in the United States. How do we work on that?
