Water, Water Everywhere....

Food, shelter, water- the Man will take it all away if you have no money to pay for it.
Thank god we can still breathe free.... but of course that doesn't help much if we have no water...

Municipal water delivery and sanitation systems are quite costly, of course. Costly in power terms, money terms, and human life terms. In that order. Don't get me wrong- I think that municipal systems are a very good idea; in fact municipalities are certainly the best system we have for distributing water to humans. But it'll cost you- and that's where I get off the boat. In my town, the water billing office is behind double bullet-proof glass. Warning signs blanket the walls: no swearing, no guns, no violence. It's the only place at City Hall I've seen security gurads patrolling. I guess people who pay their water bills in person tend to be angry. I guess they want water.

How can it be that $ come before humans? How can it be that what's so freely shared with us from the earth we live on can be controlled by others? Or that "municipalities" will actually cut off water to members of the municipality that don't pay what they demand?

The usual answers are on the order of "Well, someone has to pay for it" or "That's the only system we got, we just need to work with the system" and "if you don't vote, you got nothin to say about it". Oh, I say. Just work within the only system we've got. Vote. Stay in the system that is relentlessly, inexorably controlling and parcelling out earth-given resources for those of us who're lucky enough to be able to pay in $. Leave six hundred sixty million humans on the earth- now, this minute- with no water. Working with the system seems to take a little too much time here- it reminds me of the twenty-seven people who recently spent three days clinging to a tuna net at sea while three countries argued about who'd be responsible for rescuing them. While the fisherman harvested the tuna from the nets. While the twenty-seven humans fought for their lives.

Of course, I could no more send rations of water around the world than I could send my childhood leftovers to the starving children in China who'd be glad to have it- but that doesn't stop me, or any of us, from actively seeking solutions outside the hegemony of Capitalism.

Here's what I'm doing:
First of all, I'm re-using water. Gray water is a perfectly acceptable way to water the garden. I siphon the water from the big tub I use for bathing into the garden; Kola's made ditches and tilted planes in the planting beds so water that's run in flows and seeps down to the plant's roots. I use biocompatible soap- my preferred is Dr Bronner's castille. Ivory's also biocompatible.
Second, I'm planning a rainwater harvest system. Yes, it'll take some $- and when it's in place, the sky will give us water! Want some?