The Tap Water's Fine!: Pollution and Alienation

The problems Pittsburgh is having with overflowing sewers during nearly every rainstorm is a serious issues to me, as it seems to be about more than just the water, the sewers, and the rivers. Of course, I was interested in how this could happen. How every bit of rainfall could cause a back-up of raw sewage, which eventually overflows into local creeks, streams, and the main rivers of the city.

One source blamed record rainfall and the heavy stress it’s put on the sewage treatment systems. Another article sited technological decisions made at various points throughout the city’s history, such as to deal with wastewater in fast-growing suburbs through septic tanks or separate sewer systems that only provided for domestic waters and not storm waters.

What can’t be debated is that the sewage, along with chemicals and other pollutants that run into the waterways after heavy rains, pose major crises for Pittsburgh residents, as well as the wildlife that inhabit the area.

The first article I read assures the reader, “Treatment of drinking water is not harmed…” Yes, your tap water will still be filtered properly, despite the sewage in the rivers, streams, and lakes. But the article didn’t mention the fish – trout, bass – we take from the river to eat. What about the deer who drink from the river? Or the crops that soak up groundwater, polluted by these chemicals and sewage. Is their water filtered for them too?

The Pittsburgh water issue is part of a much larger crisis, one that’s plaguing all of this country on many fronts. We put things on our mouth, we chew, we swallow, without knowing what they are. Are they even foods? We certainly don’t know where they come from, or what their ingredients are. Just like this reporter didn’t think to address the greater issue at hand – that the water isn’t just drank directly from our taps – it’s absorbed by our plants, lapped by the animals we eat – we are alienated that which nourishes us. Food. Water.

I think of Janisse Ray and her writing about the Longleaf Pine Forest. The ecosystem was so intricate, and we came to know it through her stories of the salamander, the gopher tortoise, and the indigo snake. We learned how they lived symbiotically, and how the extinction of one species was like a deadly domino effect for the rest. We came to care for that ecosystem in the way that she hoped, through her passionate writing, but most of all through just through the awareness she brought to us. I didn’t even know these forests existed before I read her book.

I think the bones of this environmental issue that I’ve written about above is not just the sewage or the rain, but the alienation. We have this problem in the first place because of the overlapping of ideas, the development of a city over a long period of time, and the lack of consideration for key elements that would’ve sustained the system’s success even as rainfalls and populations increased. We develop and urbanize and search for solutions. But we have to try to see that the solution is to take a step back and remember how the world works naturally, because that’s the way that’s it’s going to work best. To write about this would be to create an awareness somehow, in the way that Ray did perhaps, gently. She was effective in relating the stories to her personal life, and I think that would be a good way to both avoid too much tension and also to draw out mirroring themes.

I don’t pretend to have solutions for the wastewater, but I know that we can’t create elaborate systems that transport toxic materials long distances if they’re faulty.

We have to be conscious that everything we throw away, pour outside, put on the ground (or on our lawns) will come back to us. The earth cycles, it lives. We wonder why people get sick with cancer, why they’re infertile. Think about the chemicals you’re pouring out – it will end up in the water and back in your food. And think about your food – it’s what gives you life. Think about it. Think.