Wednesday September 13, 2023; 3:24 PM EDT
- I continued my fairly regular practice of attending the country health board meeting. Today the meeting ran over--starting at 4:30, it would usually end by 6:00, but this session went on until about 7:45 pm. There was a lot of line-by-line editing of a revised set of guidelines for septic systems. I learned a lot, including that I might not have the patience to serve on a county board anytime soon. #
- But I didn't know that septic systems tend to fail at a fairly high rate if they aren't designed or operated properly, and that the groundwater here is not so far below the surface, not far from the septic field that's supposed to digest the waste before the water makes its way into the underground flow. I learned that water tends to move underground toward a near stream or river, and that a failing septic system might not spoil the water of the home-owner but would have its effect on folks downstream, if stream includes underground water too. #
- It takes decades to catch up with sloppy or negligent oversight of public waters -- I already knew that heavy metals from industry will remain in the mud at the bottom of the St. Joseph River here for the foreseeable future, eg. (And in the reeds that grow on the bottom, and in the fish and waterfowl that eat the reeds, and on the dinner table of the fishermen and women who eat what they've caught in the river. And so forth. Some things can't readily be fixed because they reside on a nearly molecular level in the natural system, once we place them there. #
- Other things can't readily be fixed because it would drive the area residents crazy to demand that tens of thousands of septic systems be replaced, or if we demand that the city pays for new sewers way out into the countryside and the rural residents pay to run lines from the sewers to their houses even if they have septic systems on the property already. #
- But fresh water is threatened all over the world, and droughts are part of the human future in ways we probably have never seen before, and we have enough water here and it needs to be kept clean because there's no replacing it. It calls for education and wise counsell and good leadership and civil society able to hold a tough conversation, and more. #