(Many thanks to all who organized the Walk About Water community potluck in Callicoon. It was a wonderful evening. And especial thanks to Marci MacLean for offering her photos to Breathing. This is what loving a place and taking joy in it looked like in our River town on April 18, 2011.)
The Walk About Water website announced, ”ON APRIL 17TH THROUGH 23,2011, five women will walk 90 miles from the Neversink Reservoir, NY to Salt Springs State Park, PA. We will carry a hand crafted “AMPHORA” of clean water taken from Buttermilk Falls in the Catskill Mountains to a place where water is endangered. WALK ABOUT WATER is a grassroots initiative to raise awareness of the sacredness of our water and our land. We will send this water around the world to other endangered lands, as a simple act of solidarity.”
On Monday April 18, forty or so Upper Delaware River Basin residents met at the Callicoon Youth Center pavilion for a community potluck dinner and to await the arrival of Bess Path, Chef Deanna and Chrys Countryman. The three Walk About Water women had trekked (see the map!) from the Neversink River to the Delaware for 10 heartfelt reasons:
1. Six women from NY and PA, grateful to live in a place of abundant clean water
2. We represent Mothers, Grandmothers, Sisters, and Daughters
3. We are moved to action by the threat of contaminated water from the extraction of fossil fuels.
4.Our concern over the harm that will come to our families and future generations
prevents us from simply living our lives peacefully and gratefully.
5. We demand that public health and quality of life for future generations take priority in decisions that affect everyone.
6. To illustrate our concerns we are carrying the most precious substance on the planet -water -90 miles on foot.
7. We do this to bring attention to how precious and vulnerable this essential resource truly is.
8 The need for clean water is something everyone has in common.
9. We seek to make this important point by visibly honoring what we love.
10 We bring good wishes to all water drinkers and bath takers.
Tears of appreciation, smiles of joy and loud applause greeted the women’s arrival.
Tannis Kowalchuk was already dressed and negotiating hugs while on stilts. Greg Swartz explained the many ways he, Tannis and Simon ensure that their organic farm,
Willow Wisp, produces excellent food with the least possible water. A welcome fire was lit and we all noshed on a smorgasbord of salads, chili, bread, chicken, appetizers and desserts provided by each and every one of us.
Tannis Kowalchuk, performer and artistic director of the NACL Theater, prepares to "walk about water" on stilts. Tannis, her husband Greg Swartz and their son Simon also own the organic Willow Wisp Farm which offers great CSA deals.
And then we joined the Walk About Water women for a stroll down Callicoon’s Lower Main Street and across the bridge to Pennsylvania
where we paused because it felt so good.
Forty or so water enthusiasts cross the Delaware River in the rain. They look a bit like May flowers, don't you think? In 2010, American Rivers named the Upper Delaware River, "America's Most Endangered River."
Misty rain and smiling faces on the Callicoon bridge to Pennsylvania.
The next day, we received this note of thanks and the tears flowed all over again:
We are staying the night in one of the most beautiful communities of people we have ever seen, they gave us a party, walked with us from ny to pa,
raised money for us and sent us off with such love that we will take with us on our journey..words cannot express how full our hearts are..
THANK YOU CALLICOON NY,DAMASCUS PA WE SHOULD ALL LIVE THE WAY THEY DO
Water Walkers~
Chef Denna,Chrys Countryman, Bess Path
Guardians~Frank and Francena
Kim Triolo Feil
October 22, 2011 at 8:47 am
In Texas we all purchased property because it WAS in a zoned residential area, we thought we had protection from industry moving in our neighborhoods. Also we should have had protection under Texas Statutes, Section 253.005 regarding the LEASE OF OIL, GAS, OR MINERAL LAND that section c reads that
“A well may not be drilled in the thickly settled part of the municipality” . But those failed. Another law that fails to protect the public is the Environmental Quality Nuisance,
Texas Administrative Code, Title 30, Part 1, Chapter 101, Subchapter A,
Rule 101.4, but that has not been enforced (in the UTA drill site case). Worth noting is that our council in Arlington denied more wells at the AC360 site when only 40% of those landowners approved being within 600ft,(a daycare even still closer), yet still we have these absentee landlords giving permission and renters not having a voice in how close wells can be to their families. There is still a whole lot of work left to be done to give equity to humans being made to coexist with a toxic, invasive, industry. The start would be to give us very specific emissions numbers on preproduction shale activities because the TCEQ and the ERG Ft Worth Air Study has FAILED to provide this info to us. For now the big question is….will we get cancer from living so close to BTEX factories? I’ve already seen enough dot connecting that makes me want to run far and wide from Arlington and Ft Worth…the air quality is sooooo bad. Living in an urban area with extra cars and trucks was bad enough before….so be aware if you live in rural areas, you may have even less laws set up to protect you and if you did, like us they are not being enforced.