My Water Awareness

 By Scott Durkee COA class of '84

When I was a kid growing up outside of Boston, I don't remember thinking much about water.  I didn't know where it came from--though we used to play ice hockey on "the reservoir"--or what was involved in getting it to my house.  I do remember being surprised when my dad, just in passing, happened to mention that he had to pay the water bill.  I asked him, "Water bill?  Isn't water free?  Like at restaurants?  Why do we have to pay for water?" 

These past two years I've been working as a manager for several community water systems here on Vashon Island, in Puget Sound.  I've been getting a much better idea about why we have to pay for water, and I'm learning that what we pay for water is probably the best deal we'll ever make.

Back in 1983, when I was attending COA, I had a class with Rich Borden.  I think it was Voluntary Simplicity.  Something he said really stuck with me.  Rich described the needs of human beings--and other animals--and their relative importance in keeping us alive.  

For example, humans need air more than anything else.  Without air we might live for perhaps four or five minutes, then die from lack of oxygen.

Water is the second most immediate human need.  Without water, we might live for a week or so, depending on the conditions.  Without water, we would die of dehydration. 

Before I started working as a "water guy," I really didn't think much about the trip that the water I consumed took.  When I think back on all of the places I've lived and all of the faucets I've used, I can't remember thinking about the water that kept me alive all these years.  I didn't know where it came from or how it was pumped or purified or through what pipes it traveled.  I had zero water consciousness.

Now it's different.  Whenever I travel I always ask the people I meet, "Where does your water come from?"  Usually the answer I get is like the one we hear about inner city kids giving when asked where milk comes from:  the carton.  Most people really don't know the source of their water.  They know that it comes through a pipe from the street, but beyond that, they don't really think about it.

It seems strange to me that we have such a limited consciousness about a resource upon which we depend so desperately. 

Ironically, it's water that kills more children around the globe than anything else.  War, weather, catastrophes, accidents, these all pale in comparison to the havoc wreaked by water-borne diseases.  And even more ironically, it's not dysentery itself but the dehydration caused by diarrhea that kills so many children. 

I find my new line of work quite satisfying, knowing that the wide variety of tasks I do each day--from mixing chlorine to repairing pumps to patching leaks to sending water samples to the lab--help to keep the water flowing. 

Vashon is a small island, but everyone needs water, and I help to provide several hundred families with theirs.  Clean, safe drinking water, delivered to their house for about a dollar a day.  This is a modern day miracle.

Where does your water come from?

 

Scott Durkee lives on Vashon Island with his two children Jeevon, 17 and Kerewyn, 11 and his high school sweetie Jill Zupan.  He works with a Vashon resident of three generations Douglas Dolstad who, coincidently, spent one semester at COA in 1980.  Together, Doug and Scott maintain five small community water systems on the island as well as raise money to fund the development of rural water systems in developing countries.