Living Downstream - TMDL's and you
Book Review: Gaviotas - A Village to Reinvent the World
Gaviotas - A Village to Reinvent the
World
by Alan Weisman
240 pages (September 1999)
Chelsea Green Pub Co; ISBN: 1890132284
Reviewed by Joan Vibert
One morning, several years ago, I awoke to a fascinating story on NPR
about a village "somewhere" which had invented and were actually using tools
that provided a sustainable life. One of the inventions, a ram pump, had caught my
attention and, as it turned out, the attention of my husband also. We vowed to find
the source of the information and, unfortunately, eventually forgot it. Last year we
received a copy of The Junction, a catalog from Chelsea Green publishing that is mailed to
Real Goods customers. It featured the book, Gaviotas, A village to Reinvent the
World and here was the story we had sought. Since The Junction tells it best I'm
going to quote from their most recent catalog:
"The eastern savannas of war-ravaged Colombia, known as the llanos, are among the most brutal environments on Earth, an unlikely setting for one of the most hopeful environmental stories ever told. Here, more than twenty-five years ago, an intrepid visionary named Paolo Lugari set out to create a village that could sustain itself agriculturally, economically, and artistically."
The inhabitants of Gaviotas realized that
if they wanted basic necessities, they would need to be resourceful, so they invented wind
turbines to convert mild breezes into energy, super-efficient pumps that tap previous
inaccessible sources of water, and solar kettles that sterilize drinking water using the
furious heat of the tropical sun.
The story of Gaviotas is told by Alan Weisman, a veteran correspondent
who was part of a team of journalists who were funded by the Ford Foundation in 1994 to
document solutions to the world's greatest environmental crises."
I would urge every environmentalist to get this book either from the
library or as an addition to your library, and I think once you read it you'll want to own
it. When the issues are overwhelming and it seems like we'll never accomplish a
fraction of what we hope to see changed, this book will provide incredible inspiration.
And, all of their accomplishments were in spite of an on-going drug culture/war in a
political climate that would have stopped most people. Their inventions have never
been patented as they wanted them to be public domain and available to all.
This is a book that will stay with you long after you put it down!
Gaviotas may be ordered from Real Goods:
800-762-7325
or from their web site
or through your local bookstore.
Living
Downstream
"Living Downstream" is what we have chosen as the title for a
new series of articles to be included in each Journal issue. This title came about
during a discussion at our February board meeting where we were joined by Tom Stiles,
Chief of Planning and Prevention at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment
(KDHE). You may recall that Tom wrote an article in the last Journal describing the
TMDL process in Kansas.
TMDL stands for Total Maximum Daily Load and refers to the maximum
amount of pollution a stream or lake can receive without violating water quality
standards. The establishment of TMDLs in Kansas came about as a court decree from
the settlement of a lawsuit filed against EPA by KNRC and Sierra Club.
Now, I promise that's as technical as I'm going to get, these acronyms
make my brain hurt. Maybe, as I did, you read Tom's article and dismissed it as
something you were glad the state is doing but certainly not something you really
understood or wanted to get involved with. Please reconsider!
In late December I spent some time going over the reply cards that many
of you send in with your membership renewal. They are very interesting and I
appreciate those of you who take the time to fill them out, it's enlightening. The
overwhelming response on the listing of environmental concerns in Kansas is water quality,
as well it should be.
So I began to wonder how KNRC could begin to address your concerns about water quality and
begin to challenge our members to participate in water quality processes. I threw
out some ideas via email to some of our board members and to Charles Benjamin.
Charles responded with a reminder that the TMDL process was going on and that Tom
Stiles was encouraging (read begging) the environmental community to become involved.
It was known that Allie Devine [then Secretary of the Kansas Department of
Agriculture] was encouraging the ag community to get involved.
Once again I read the article and thought to myself that I was thinking
of something more fun, more comprehendible, something we could get involved in that I
really understood! But, I called Tom and asked him to come to the February meeting
and suggested that we could brainstorm the idea of how to get people out to his meetings.
And, I'm glad I did.
I was fully prepared to point out to Tom that much of this is beyond the layperson's
knowledge and that it is very intimidating to attend these meetings where everyone but you
seems to understand what's going on. I'm glad the opportunity didn't present itself
because I really didn't understand "what's going on".
Tom doesn't need us to attend meetings to talk "Section 303(d)
lists" or even "TMDLs", he wants advocates for the water itself.
Water, that attracted people to certain locations in Kansas when it was
being settled. Water, that created a quality of life that would be unthinkable
without it. Water, with whom we have all had relationships throughout our lives
whether we realize it or not. Have you ever sat on a dock at a Kansas lake and
enjoyed the blazing sunset reflecting in the water? Have you ever felt the
excitement of a swift river running beneath your canoe or rowboat? Have you ever
slipped off shoes and socks and thrilled to cold water embracing your feet on a hot summer
day? Have you ever held the hand of a curious small child as they bent down to
explore a crawdad in a stream bank? Have you ever held a fishing pole and watched
your bobber dance in the current as fish pass beneath? If any of these "have
you evers" evoke a response in you then you do have relationships with water.
Tom is only asking us to reclaim our rights to have a relationship with
water that is clean and healthy and to demand that our Kansas waters are what they could
be. The Powers-That-Be think we don't mind not being able to let the kids get in the
water when we canoe on the Kaw and they won't know differently until we tell them!
It's up to us, the ordinary residents, of Kansas to take back our water and to
demand protection for a resource that we can't live without. You don't have to know
science to make an impact at the public meetings, you just have to know water.
- Joan Vibert
For more background, visit the KDHE web site.
Or contact Tom Stiles at KDHE: (phone) 785-296-6170 (email) tstiles@kdhe.state.ks.us