by Jeannine Anderson

Created on: December 27, 2008   Last Updated: March 20, 2011

Humanity is reliant on rivers, whether for food, transport, electricity, commerce or recreation.  We are all connected to each other through the water cycle and by the need to protect and preserve it.  Today’s collective and domestic water systems are dangerously affected by aging industrial infrastructure, industrial waste, agricultural waste, natural and synthetic chemicals, medical waste and prescription drugs.  Those affects are showing up in drinking water supplies. 

German studies show that treated water from sewage plants are even retaining artificial sweeteners, many of which are known to have adverse health affects on people.

What we are eating, drinking and otherwise ingesting into our bodies is starting to show up downstream in somebody else’s drinking water.  The water that flows through each of us will eventually be returned by the water cycle to the atmosphere where it will fall again as rain.  Our health becomes the river’s health, becomes our health, and on it goes.  Humanity’s part in the water cycle by how we use, reuse and recycle the small portion of fresh water that is our share, affects the health of the entire water cycle as much as the tainted waters we are now faced with are affecting human and environmental health worldwide.

Rivers are but one part of the complex natural system which moves water through the water cycle to irrigate the planet and recharge groundwater aquifers, areas of underground soil and rock that act as storage for groundwater.  Groundwater then moves along, at varying paces, to keep rivers and streams flowing, and wells full, in times of little or no rainfall or snowmelt.  Most people draw their daily water through a well or municipal plumbing, from an aquifer or from the groundwater supplying the aquifer.  That water may have traveled as far as 100 miles from the point of recharge to where it is used. If the journey between the two points takes the water through disease carrying or toxic water or ground, the health of the water at the spigot will reflect it.

Industry and people continue to use rivers, streams and other waterways for dangerous industrial purposes and disposal of waste, shunting the mess off on the people and environment downstream.  As the population worldwide increases apace (tripling during the 20th century), the demand on groundwater is increasing to a point where we see streams, rivers, lakes and even aquifers drawing

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