Created and Curated by Sophia Sisler
how many conversations flow into a larger dialogue
This is research about water as a cross disciplinary conversation; it is integral to our health, our growth of food, the weather, the planet, it's deeply imbedded in various religions, as well as in literature. Running water is often the hallmark of anthropological development. Water ties us together in a way that I hope will foster conversation. There is an undeniable attraction within human nature to water, for as many reasons as there are of us. We perpetually write, think, and study water. It is a natural force that has the ability to both create and destroy. It is utterly unique and a conversation surrounding it is almost impossible to separate into individual pieces, so please read across the lines in every sense you can. Carry the conversation as far as water flows.
The rule of threes in survival - a person can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter in a harsh environment, three days without water, and three weeks without food
The facts
water makes up between 60-70% of the human body
An estimated 2.2 billion people need access to safely managed drinking water, including 884 million currently without basic drinking water services.
An estimated 4.2 billion people need access to safely managed sanitation.
An estimated 3 billion people need access to basic handwashing facilities. (CDC WASH)
a local problem
Bozeman's Limited Water Supply
"With shifting climate patterns, our water supplies are likely to become less reliable. More moisture is predicted to arrive as rain instead of snow in coming years, and warmer temperatures are expected, potentially leading to earlier peak flows and drier summers.
Plus, Bozeman is booming, growing at a rate far above the national average. More people will need more water, and eventually, these supplies won’t be enough. Without water conservation, Bozeman could be facing a water shortage within the next 15 years. The City’s Water Conservation Program is helping residents use water more efficiently, creating the single largest source of water for Bozeman’s future."
Acting to Conserve Our Water Supply
"We can’t make more water. Taking action now to conserve what we have is the cheapest, most expedient, and environmentally-friendly way to thrive through drought and ensure a reliable water supply for the future. And all it takes to help is doing one thing to reduce your water use."
Some of The questions
Why is water so important to so many different people?
Why is water a recurring theme in literature?
Is access to clean water a human right?
Why is water a motif of almost all religions?
How is water important ecologically or agriculturally?
How does water impact our social and geological landscapes in Montana?
What is water used for?
Do you think about your access to water?
Has water impacted the direction of your life; spiritually, physically, or otherwise?
In what ways do you use water?
What personal, political, or spiritual connections do you have to water?
In what ways will water shape our collective future, both locally and globally?
a series of interviews
“Sometimes I’m worried, because I think some people are wasting water, in ways that I don't like. I like to take these quizzes on how to not waste it or pollute it. because I like not polluting it because it is a necessity to us and all animals on earth.”
In my conversation with Luke, aged 10 at the time, he expressed a lot of concern about how little people seemed to care about water conservation. He referenced learning about water use in class, and even sought out online quizzes and reading about ways he could be a better gardener and teeth brusher. He suggests using a hose to water your garden directly instead of a sprinkler, because "they just spray water everywhere." Luke wanted more people to be aware of their water use overall, and will do his best to use it responsibly as he grows up.
Luke Minton, Actor, pictured on the Hyalite Reservoir
"an important part of our faith tradition when we baptize someone use water, we need water to invite someone into our community. Water is everywhere, and I don’t think that is accidental. We have to have a physical sign of the sacrament, and choose something that we all know."
Wren and I discussed the ways in which water is a part of her faith and personal life. For Wren, she thinks about how "we need water to live and how it sustains the life of our whole community." For her, it is important to consider attending to the needs of her neighbors and friends, living in the Puget Sound and being aware of the ways in which the watershed works around her. In her faith, there are so many references to water and she believes that is intentional. There is the water of creation, the parting of the waters to freedom, the great floods, and so much more, and how all of that becomes tangible when her congregation touches water. Every time she has contact with water she thinks about how it is a connection to a community of faith that spans oceans and millennia.
Rev. Wren Blessing, Rector of Grace Church, Episcopal Diocese, pictured with her son on the shore of Flathead Lake
"Bozeman has a lot of water supply issues too, we are truly at the headwaters of the headwaters of the Missouri Basin. There is really no upstream for us to get more water. And with changes in climate and more population growth we’re really going to need to start thinking about ways to conservation and ways to extend the supply we have farther through conservation."
Jessica was very eager to talk about water in Bozeman, Montana. She spoke about the general attitude of disinterest toward water conservation in a place like our community, because we can see snow, streams, and reservoirs around us all the time. It's hard to think about running out of something that is physically surrounding our community in many ways. She also emphasized that Bozeman is truly the headwater to the headwaters in the Missouri watershed, and when we get low on resources, there is nowhere farther up the chain to rely on. Jessica leads many of the community conversations on water use and helps run the Water Smart initiative for the city, linked in this page.
Jessica Ahlstrom, Water Conservation Specialist, City of Bozeman
“And like the most potent metaphors, this one is so powerful because it's real. After the riots and the politics and the bloodshed in the streets and everything else, we’re still going to need water.”
Dr. Minton and I have had many conversations about water as a recurrent theme in the texts we have read together as well as the ways in which we are so attached to it in our daily lives. In every piece of literature we have come into contact with together, there is space for us to discuss how water shapes the narrative, eroding the writing. She talks about how water manages to be so intrinsic to us as human beings; in every spiritual thing, in every scientific thing, and motif and metaphor across literature. She always wants to push farther into the question: 'why water?'
Dr. Gretchen Minton, Author, Dramaturg, and English Professor
mní wičóni: water is life
In my traditions, and the traditions of the tribe, we cannot talk about water in the terms of 'conservation.' We are the youngest sibling of creation, and so we only serve our elders, all who came before us. The questions you ask are based in the idea the water is a resource to be used or profited from. That is not how we see the world.
Dr. Finley and I had an incredibly humbling conversation over the phone on a rainy afternoon. I grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation and had been at numerous events where Dr. Finley had spoken. He is the head of several cultural outreach programs, and directed the River Honoring, a field trip I had been on all throughout my elementary education. When I asked him about the event and its cultural significance, he told me that it was created purely for the school curriculum and had very little to do with the tribe in their faith. The Salish and Kootenai people were happy to be there and explain their connection to the water and land as well as display their history, but the whole concept of conservation was not a part of their lexicon. He explained that to his people, all of the natural world came before the creation of man, and so there is no conserving that which is greater than yourself. He gently suggested that I find a way to ask questions about water that weren't so rooted in the consideration of water as a resource.
Dr. Vernon Finley, President of the Kootenai Culture Committee
From The Berkeley Pit Snow Geese Project:
"water cleans because it is so easily dirtied"
Author Tim Lecain wrote extensively about Snow Geese landing on the Berkeley Pit and being killed by the toxic water. The Berkeley Pit is a remnant of Montana's Copper King Era, where the toxic waste from the capital boom has had devastating repercussions.
Dr. Timothy LeCain, Author, History and Philosophy Professor
"[this conversation] reaffirmed this theological concept that water is life, and if science and religion shared something, I think it would be that fact. You can’t live without water”
Dr. Jay Smith discusses the ways in which dialogue is complicated when there are challenges to world views, especially when it comes to matters that impact the community in large and small ways. Personally and collectively certain belief systems are in place around water, and that will always force hard conversations. When issues arise around water, there are passionate responses. Water is absolutely necessary to life, and Dr. Smith thinks about the ways that is true to both his spiritual and physiological existence.
Dr. Jay Smith, Yellowstone Theological Institute President, Professor of Theology and Ethics
Montana Climate Assessment Report
Major findings
The results of this analysis produced several key messages, some of which are shown below, about how climate change will affect Montana’s water resources (for a complete list of key messages, see the Water chapter).
Rising temperatures will reduce snowpack, shift historical patterns of streamflow in Montana, and likely result in additional stress on Montana’s water supply, particularly during summer and early fall. Key messages associated with these findings follow:
Montana’s snowpack has declined over the observational record (i.e., since the 1930s) in mountains west and east of the Continental Divide; this decline has been most pronounced since the 1980s. [high agreement, medium evidence]
Warming temperatures over the next century, especially during spring, are likely to reduce snowpack at mid and low elevations. [high agreement, robust evidence]
Historical observations show a shift toward earlier snowmelt and an earlier peak in spring runoff in the Mountain West (including Montana). Projections suggest that these patterns are very likely to continue into the future as temperatures increase. [high agreement, robust evidence]
Earlier onset of snowmelt and spring runoff will reduce late-summer water availability in snowmelt-dominated watersheds. [high agreement, robust evidence]
Groundwater demand will likely increase as elevated temperatures and changing seasonal availability of traditional surface-water sources (e.g., dry stock water ponds or inability of canal systems to deliver water in a timely manner) force water users to seek alternatives. [high agreement, medium evidence]
Rising temperatures will exacerbate persistent drought periods that are a natural part of Montana’s climate. Key messages associated with these findings follow:
Multi-year and decadal-scale droughts have been, and will continue to be, a natural feature of Montana’s climate [high agreement, robust evidence]; rising temperatures will likely exacerbate drought when and where it occurs. [high agreement, medium evidence]
Changes in snowpack and runoff timing will likely increase the frequency and duration of drought during late summer and early fall. [high agreement, medium evidence]
In Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources the connection between water and civilization development is highlighted: "not only water is necessary for drinking and hygiene, indeed it is a base for agriculture, commerce, transportation, and even defense from the foes. The growth and evolution of human culture and civilization have had a strong relationship with water resources" (Hosseiny, Seyedeh Habibbeh, et al.). Water was a key piece of any growing community, and its roles were myriad. These applications were all necessary for civilization, and those with access and priorities set to water practice flourished more quickly than their neighbors.The cultivation of the land and people through water management and access continues through to today, "the sustainability and development of past, and present human societies have been conditioned by advances in water science, and by their use through engineering and technology" (Hosseiny, Seyedeh Habibbeh, et al.). Water science becomes the cornerstone for advances across all of societal, political, and ecological development, with impacts that ripple out beyond that.
Bibliography
- Bovell, Andrew. When the Rain Stops Falling. Dramatists Play Service, 2012.
- City of Bozeman. "Water Smart Bozeman." Water Conservation | City Of Bozeman, https://www.bozeman.net/departments/utilities/water-conservation.
- CDC. “Global Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene (WASH).” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 16 Feb. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/index.html.
- Corthron, Kia. A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick . French, 2010.
- Hosseiny, Seyedeh. Economical, Political, and Social Issues in Water Resources. Edited by Omid Bozorg-Haddad, Elsevier, 2021.
- Ibsen, Henrik. Enemy of the People. Digireads Publishing, 2018.
- May, et al. “Indigenous Climate Network.” Indigenous Climate Action, 2020, https://www.indigenousclimateaction.com/.
- Multiple Contributors. “Executive Summary.” Executive Summary | MCA, https://montanaclimate.org/chapter/executive-summary.
Two Thirds of our bodies water, two thirds' the earth water. We start in water, fetus in the sac. So why in the end put down in the dirt?water is home, sailors got it right. Burial at sea. - H.j. (Corthorn, scene iv)
Cool Dip is an ecocritical play centered on a young preacher-in-training and student, Abebe, who has traveled from Ethiopia to a rural town in the United States. His home country is in conflict with the World Bank, a company set on building dams and restricting access to the precious supplies of water. The small community he moves into is impacted by drought while many community members were also devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The tension around water, in amounts too much and too little, floods the text.
In a passage where Abebe's housemates are chastising him about wasting water by repeatedly flushing the toilet to marvel at the water moving, he responds with passion: "I respect water, I do not take water for granted, how many gallons does one person in Ethiopia use per day? Three! One person in the United Kingdom? Thirty-one! One person in the United States? One hundred fifty-one! Americans talk about conservation but you do not really think it will run out, only one percent of all the world's water is useable, when it is gone, gone, look at this drought! And last year Katrina, too little water or too much " - Abebe (Corthorn, Scene V).
In Henrik Isben's Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann makes a discovery concerning the Baths his town intends to open as a wellness resort and bid to expand the town's economy. He secretly tests the water after hearing reports of sickness from water sources across the region and finds that the water is poisoned. This discovery is at first lauded by his fellow members of the bath projects as an excellent catch, only for the tide of sentiment to reverse quickly and aggressively. The water rhetoric floods across the dialogues as the poisoned water becomes the poisoned town, and Dr. Stockmann, only proclaiming truth and science, becomes an enemy of the people for standing against them.
The water's poisoned. The people are poisoned. The children are poisoned! The water is poisoned! - Dr. Stockmann
When the Rain Stops Falling takes on a nearly post-apocalyptic time as numerous characters attempt to navigate a world in which the backdrop is constant rainfall, and there seem to be many natural disasters in constant action across the world. As the cast navigates sideways and backwards through trauma and time, each of them are confronted with the sound of the rain and the mistakes of their collective pasts that has brought them to the consequences of their personal lives and the greater state of the world. In a dialogue between Beth and Henry, they discuss the futility of man in the face of the natural world and its ramification of the advancement of man:
In America hundreds of thousands flee west trying to escape the weather. it shifted whole populations, Beth. IT changed the course of history. The weather! and it made me think just how helpless we are when the weather turns against us. All our science. All our knowledge. all out magnificent endeavor amounts to very little in the face of bad weather - Henry (Bovell, 17).
When asked what he could personally do to help with the water crisis we face, 10 year old Luke responded:
"It's hard for just one person out of the billions of people in the world to make an impact. . . I only take as much water as I need at the time."
Credits:
Created with images by srongkrod - "St. Mary Lake and wild goose island in Glacier national park" • Brian - "Firehole River Yellowstone" • tavi004 - "Very famous and dramatic waterfall Skogafoss in Iceland" • CheriAlguire - "An overlooking landscape of Gates of the Mountain in Helena National Forest, Montana"