Photo provided by REUTERS/US Fish and Wildlife Service; PBS.org
July 12, 2023
When I decided to work in the environmental profession after college, I did not fully understand the scope of what it would mean for me. My viewpoint was mainly from a public health perspective, ensuring people were safe from environmental pollution. My viewpoint was narrow. As I became more involved in my work, I realized that humankind was part of a larger ecosystem. We have a symbiotic relationship with wildlife, land, and water.
Water is the key to our life. We drink water. We wash our bodies and our clothing with water. We cook with water. And for some of us, water has a spiritual meaning. Rivers, lakes, and streams are where we meditate and have peace from a stressful day. We go there to pray. Some of us like to fish for recreation and food. Water bodies are important to other species other than humankind. The biodiversity in our watersheds in Alabama is comparable to the Amazon Rainforest. The Cahaba River watershed has been coined "the Amazon of North America."
These water bodies need to be protected. President Richard Nixon's administration created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 to ensure the protection of our environment. The statutes that Congress enacted within the EPA were designed to protect our air, water, and land. However, even with climate impacts looming, we are seeing our regulations to protect our lands being diminished by important decision-makers.
Our Supreme Court recently ruled that only “adjoining wetlands” are protected by the Clean Water Act. This means you have to see the bodies of water that are connected to the wetlands. This is laughable because water always has a flow. Wetlands are freshwater bodies that feed into our ecosystem. It all eventually flows into the ocean.
The question is: Why should we care? Of course, environmental professionals care because it is part of our work. However, the degradation of our environment affects all of us. Wetlands provide what we environmental folks call “ecosystem services,” which are human and animal benefits from natural systems in the environment.
Like wetlands.
Without ecosystem services, we would have no pollination of plants, no decomposition of waste, or filtration of water. Wetlands work like a sponge to soak up water from rain. This prevents erosion and flooding. With the severity of storm surges from climate impacts, reducing wetlands can cause significant economic losses through flooding. Wetlands also house many of our wildlife species. Alabama and other states near the Gulf of Mexico are biodiversity hotspots. Bogs, swamps, marshes, and wetlands are where many of these species reside. Some of these species filter our water systems and provide food for communities. They even act as prey and predator, which is important for wildlife we depend on to survive. Lastly, please know that all bodies of water feed into each other. Water is connected to land, so to say that “adjacent wetlands” don’t feed into other water bodies makes no sense at all.
Environmental scientists and activists are concerned about the impacts of this interpretation by our Supreme Court. Rightly so. Water is life. It is essential for our drinking sources, for our food, for recreation, and for our spiritual well-being. Sustainability has become a buzzword that people use, but the ultimate importance of sustainable practices is to protect our resources for now and for future generations. We are not doing so, especially our decision-makers. Water protection is not a partisan issue. This affects us all. And our communities will suffer if our government system continues to make short-sighted decisions. Our water sources are at risk.
Water is life. We need it, and we need it to be clean to survive.
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