Wisdom from Water
Rev. Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham, www.secondparish.org
September 13, 2009
This past Thursday our local interfaith organization, the Hingham Hull Religious Leaders Association – HHRLA for an acronym, or “Hurla” for short – had our first meeting. We gather at one of our places of worship for lunch and fellowship.
We have leaders of virtually all of our religious organizations – Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Baha’i, Unitarian Universalist, as well as leaders of Wellspring, Advocates for the Homeless and No Place for Hate.
As I was getting my lunch, I decided I wanted water – I prefer to avoid soda in general, and I wasn’t in the mood for coffee. I noticed one of my colleagues with a glass of water, so I asked “Where’s the water?” I was told it was right out on the table. “Yes,” I said, “but it’s bottled water.” “Oh, that’s no problem – you can pour it into a glass.” (My colleague was beginning to worry I might a little dense.) “No, I’m trying to avoid bottled water.”
So I went to the kitchen, where our host graciously pointed to 5-gallon bottle of water, cold and ready to dispense. “No, I’m looking for tap water; Hingham water is perfectly good, isn’t it?” “Yes, I suppose it is....”
So, why did I go to such lengths to avoid bottled water? First of all, I feel a little snookered. We pay for bottled water on the assumption that it should be better than tap water, but in fact much of it is drawn from municipal water sources. We learned while living in New Jersey that only 51% of the water in a bottled was needed to claim a place of origin, so Poland Springs water, for example, could draw 49% from our local water supply and import 51% from Maine and claim this was pure spring water – when almost half of it was in fact water that could have come from our own taps. Worse, the water might have been drawn from other people’s taps; for example, groundwater levels have dropped 40 feet in a town in India because of Coke’s water bottling facility.
It turns out that:
- Bottled water costs hundreds or thousands of time more than tap water.
- It is less regulated than municipal water supplies.
- The bottles themselves require 17 million Barrels of oil, enough to fuel one million cars, and 86% of these bottles are discarded rather than recycled. I was happy to read that Hingham’s selectmen have passed a resolution supporting an expansion of Mass. Beverage Container Deposit Law to include non-carbonated cans and bottles in order to encourage more recycling of these bottles.
- My main concern is that the spread of bottled water – now a $100 billion business worldwide, $15 billion in US alone – takes funding and attention away from keeping our shared water supplies and water sources pure. We’re fortunate in having very high-quality water here on the South Shore, but other areas of the country have suffered from neglect, and there have been several local cases of contamination recently in Milton and Marblehead.
- The most disturbing aspect of the growth in the use of bottled water is that it makes drinkable water into a private good, something which is available (or not) according to whether we have money or not; and if we permit ourselves to neglect the quality of our public water supplies, we will over time become more and more dependent on our ability to purchase bottled water.
- What’s more, most of us can’t distinguish between tap water and bottled water. A November 2007 CBS News found that 2/3rds of those who participated in a blind taste test either preferred tap to bottled water or couldn’t tell the difference; yet ¾ of us drink bottled water, and 1/5 drink ONLY bottled water
So, I guess I was a little stubborn about not taking the bottle of water that was offered. I’m not a fanatic on the topic; there are occasions, especially when traveling, when bottled water is very convenient, but I try not to lose sight of the fact that the supply of usable water in our world is limited. Only 3% of all the unimaginably vast quantities of water in the world are fresh, and that limited quantity can only too easily become contaminated. Today, about 20% of the world’s population lacks ready access to fresh water, and by 2040 that is expected to rise to about 50% who will have to struggle to find clean water each day. We all know how vital water is to our living and how much we miss it when we can’t find it.
Water is above all a human need, and something that we have struggled over and shared over thousands of years. It’s hardly surprising that water has been a key symbol in most of our religious traditions. Water is used as a metaphor for cleansing not just the body but the soul; King David of Israel – he of David and Goliath – is credited with a Psalm of contrition after he has committed a very great wrong; he says “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” [Ps. 51:7] Jesus went to John the Baptist to be cleansed in the Jordan River before beginning his ministry, and ritual washings are found in many of our religious traditions. Water has the unique quality of transforming itself and cleansing itself as it changes form, freezing, boiling, evaporating, collecting salt or impurities and then leaving them behind in one of the key cycles of life here on earth. If you are ever distressed by hard rains such as we’ve had over the past few days, take comfort from the fact that it’s really about a renewal of clean, fresh water for the use of the web of life.
We come here to be washed, to turn again to our higher purposes as individuals and as a community. Even as water is renewed, becoming clean and fresh over and over, may we here in the presence of each other and the holy be renewed and made fresh as we gather.
Amen.