Guest Opinion: Our Water

By Janet Alderton

We all rely on pure water for our health. Our lives and the lives of all living things in our San Juan Islands depend on clean water. We share the responsibility to keep our water supplies clean.

Water is not something that you can hold tight. You use water in your house or garden. Then it flows down: down into the soil or down through cracks in the rock, downhill into streams, lakes, wetlands and shorelines. If water traveled alone, that would be great. But water loves companions, and some of its companions are down right undesirable. People have created a lot of useful products that seem wonderful — until chemicals in those products escape and are scattered by the flow of water. Over time, chemicals that are not fully understood, or even measured, are accumulating in our water.

We hope that our water will be pure and healthful. But often your water is contaminated by your own actions or by your neighbor’s actions. So… you can drink purified water, but did you know that you breathe in droplets of water when you shower? Cancer-causing and other chemicals can go straight into your blood from your lungs. And, as we age, we become more vulnerable because our immune function declines.

Sensible buffers protect our ground water, our lakes, and our wetlands by capturing and purifying contaminated water. Buffers protect your health. The living soil converts toxic chemicals into harmless breakdown products. The irregular surfaces and complex ecology of undisturbed natural buffers trap water and inactivate the toxic chemicals that water transports much more effectively than a garden or an orchard. Sensible buffers are a terrific value. The cost of building artificial water purification facilities that equal the capacity of sensible buffers would be prohibitive. Because undisturbed buffers of native plants filter and purify the water that we all rely on, property owners who maintain undisturbed buffers of native plants should receive a tax credit.

For your health and for the health of our islands– support sensible buffers.