… not a drop to drink. At least not potable water, and we live on an island, in the middle of a lake!
When we moved here in 2012 the water, straight from a well, tasted divine. Certainly nothing like the city-water we were used to drinking in Vancouver.
In fact, when we drove out here to check out the place before we signed the lease, our prospective landlord at the time, offered us a glass of water, and it was probably one of the main things to convince us to move here.
Not so any more.
We’ve experienced a slow decline in water quality, but the stressors on the water-table this past year have been the final nail in the coffin – metaphorically speaking.
Population pressure: Since the farmers sold off their acreage this little island has been sub-divided, and sub-divided until there are far too many houses for the land to sustain. The older houses have septic sewage systems and the newer ones have pump-out ones.
The small creeks upstream of the lake are surrounded by commercial greenhouses. More and more are being built every day as people are finally starting to realise that food security for decades to come will have to be sourced as locally as possible – a legacy of the collateral damage from the last two years. And no matter how stringent their safety protocols are for their waste water something always gets past the system
This last summer heated up the lake and raised bacteria levels until swimming was a health hazard.
Our well water has been treated with chlorine to combat unsafe levels of bacteria four times, so far. It’s reasonable to expect we’ll be receiving ‘boil-water’ advisories next summer. (if we’re still here)
We don’t drink water straight from the tap anymore.
One of the things we were saving up for to buy next year as part of our preparations to head off for parts north-west of here, (and become the ‘Wunder-Lusters’ we’ve been hoping to be for the last two years) was a Berkey water filtration system.
With a little rearranging of priorities, we had the rather large, for us, sum of money to buy it now instead of next year.
Having a glass of water is a pleasure we cannot take for granted again.
‘… Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink …’
From ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
… so you go back to your clean copy and go through it with a paranoia-inspired fine-tooth comb, secure in the knowledge that no matter how obsessive you are, there will always be at least one typo that will escape detection …
