29/06/2024
I was tired of waiting.
I listen daily to the updates from the city concerning our water usage in Calgary. Calgary had a main water feeder pipe break mid-June, and we are in serious water conservation mode. It isn't that we don't have water. We have two water feeder locations. One is the Bear's Paw and the other is Glenmore. Bear's Paw is the main feeder reservoir, and it provides 60% of the water for Airdrie, Calgary, Chestermere, Strathmore and T'suutina Nation. Glenmore provides 40%. Right now, Glenmore is supplying 100% of all of our water. The city has dubbed it 'the little engine that could.'
Citizens, including me, have been working hard to conserve water. We have to ensure that there is enough water for our hospitals and our fire department. I have been avoiding washing floors and bathrooms because I don't want to use water unnecessarily right now. But, we have had an abundance of rain in the past few days, and my rain barrels are full again. It is amazing how you can avoid turning on a water tap if necessary. Yesterday, I began to clean my house using rain water from my water barrel. I began to wonder why I hadn't thought of it before. I washed my floors cupboards, railings and walls. I may continue using it, if possible. Why not? I have to pay to use city water, and rain water is free.
Our water crisis has really got me thinking about how frugal my parents were when it came to using water. We had no dishwasher. We kids washed the dishes by hand and towel dried them. I remember that Saturday night was bath night, and we would go into the tub one by one. Two or three kids probably used the same bath water. I grew up in a resort town where we had two beautiful fresh water lakes. During the summer, we swam everyday, and that sure cut down on water usage at home.
When I was a child, the world population was around 280 billion. Today, it is pushing 10 billion. Perhaps, we should all start taking water conservation more seriously, because the same water that I grew up with is the water we are using today, except that it has been recycled a few times. I don't think that anyone has learned to manufacture new water, apart from desalinization of ocean water, and that is a very costly process, which removes valuable nutrients from the water as well as salt.
Sometimes, these little disasters that we face in life are really wake-up calls in disguise. I fill my cat's water bowls with fresh water twice a day. Wouldn't you know that they climb onto the outside rail and drink rainwater right out of the barrel. They seem to be thriving on it pretty well too.
Water is life. We all need to protect our source of life. Our permanent water storage sites, otherwise known as glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate. Our ocean water is becoming polluted because cruise ships dump in them, and micro plastics are now showing up in fish, because plastics are being dumped into our rivers and oceans. What is wrong with us? It reminds me of a line in a poem called, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', by Silas Marner. "Water, water everywhere, and nary a drop to drink."
