Milk & Water - A New Way of Thinking

Making the best use of the multiple ways water comes to us

When was the last time you thought about how “your” water gets to you? What about the historical importance of milk as a beverage? More so, when was the last time you examined the relationship between milk and water?

Yes, these are two human beverages. Water, we cannot live without. We pretty much all know this.

But in what ways do we need to think–or rethink–about our water? If you live in the US, chances are that you have regular, controlled access to drinking water and you probably do not think about it much at all. Whether your access is through a municipality, or a well, most of us do not need to consider where we will go each day to find or collect our drinking water. (I know there are recent problems with certain municipalities’ water or cleanliness. This post is not specifically addressing those cases. It is looking at a bigger picture.)

Water is available to us in many forms: rain, springs, rivers, small streams, aquifers, ponds, and lakes to name a few. These natural sources of water have supplied humans for countless generations. They are essential. We have learned how to harness the water in springs, from rain, and from the water that flows around us so that we can keep ourselves hydrated and so that we can plant food. Human genius never ceases to amaze me.

But what happens when some people wish to control other people’s access to life-sustaining water? Worse yet, what happens when human activities pollute and tarnish the water for all of us? How do we address this? Where can we look for solutions? These are questions that, unfortunately, we need to be asking every day. Too many rivers and streams that offered our ancestors pristine, drinkable water are now dirty and filled with chemicals and pollutants that no one wants to bathe in, much less drink.

We created wells to tap into aquifers–naturally filtered water–at different underground levels. Again, human genius amazes me. But with human invention, comes human intervention. Laws, regulations, and more subtle social “restrictions” have changed how we view our waters and water sources. Human inventions have changed how we access water and what we think of as clean water. What this means for modern people is staggering.

• Water restrictions and “rights” preclude certain people from accessing this abundant natural resource based on where we live or what social bracket we are in.

• Water for irrigation is in jeopardy due to the whims of politicians and regulatory control.

• What we think of as drinking water is controlled and mechanized, risking our ability to access clean water at any given moment.

• We have mostly lost our collective understanding of how water cycles relate to the earth and seasons around us.

• We have disrupted the natural systems that sustain us to the point where droughts and floods put cities (perhaps even civilizations?) at enormous risk.

These are merely a few of the ways that we have lost touch with the water around us. Most of us see water as something to be controlled and utilized rather than deeply respected and appreciated as humans have for many millennia. We can regain that awe and appreciation with a shift in perspective.

Here are some points to consider (but not get lost in):

• Water is here on this earth for all of us. We all must care for it and we all have a right to use the water near us for drinking.

• Understanding how water moves, both above ground and underground, is vital to our use and care of water.

• Properly caring for our soils is one of the best ways to respectfully manage the water we need in any particular place.

• The speed and rate of rainfall can cause flooding on improperly managed and overly developed soils, but with small shifts, all that water becomes part of the abundance that we can use.

For one small example, oak trees, which are native to almost the entirety of the US landscape, are perfect for water management on our soils. First, the living oaks help to slow down the flow of water into soils, preventing floods. Secondly, oak leaves from the previous seasons take a long time to break down into soil. The oak’s leaves covering our forest floors, our communities, even our lawns, further slow down the rainfall hitting our soils making flooding less of a danger. These layers of oak leaves help to keep water in our soils, rather than enabling the erosion that plagues many areas.

Fascinating, right?

This is one tiny example of how the microcosm of water on our land impacts and affects large scale water access and water rights. Where can you keep leaves in place?

Now, switching gears for a moment…

Let’s talk about milk. 

What does milk have to do with water and water rights?

I am so glad you asked.

If we are caring for our soils properly, our soils will provide an abundance of grasses, legumes, and forage that we humans cannot digest. All these grasses and forage further help to store that water for us. Our beautiful mammalian friends–bovines, ovines, caprines, and camelids–take these growing plants that we cannot eat and convert them to milk that quenches our thirst and which we can thrive on. This natural system captures and stores the water that falls on the land–to give us food and hydration that we CAN use. Indeed, it is such a beautiful system that one wonders why we ever distanced ourselves and communities from our domesticated friends. Is it time to invite our domesticated grazing friends back into our neighborhoods?

Yes, of course these mammals need their own forms of hydration in addition to grazing. In natural systems, they have this through the small streams, creeks, and springs that flow naturally on our lands (definitely more abundantly in some places than others). Some of these mammals have adapted to need less water than others (camels, and goats), while still being able to get the water and nutrients they need from the forage they graze. It is a perfect system adapted through millennia, cultivated by generations of human stewardship. We all have the potential to benefit from these natural systems and the relationships formed over so many generations. 

And yet most of us do not benefit from it. Instead we rely upon single points of failure to access our water.

Most of us are used to the laws and regulations that govern every drop of water, every calorie of food that we consume.

For instance, let’s look at California. It is my understanding that harvesting rainwater for personal use prior to the 2012 Rainwater Capture Act was illegal.

Now, it seems that harvesting personal use rainwater in California “can be done” with a rain barrel system that complies with “specified requirements.”¹

It is ironic that in California, the vast majority of city rainwater flows directly into the ocean. Yes, directly into the ocean!

Taking a look at Los Angeles as an example, an extremely complex century old system of street drains, paved flood control channels and innumerous dams divert freshwater away from roads and structures dumping the precious life sustaining liquid into the sea as fast as possible.

We have accepted these civil laws as precedent. But our man-made laws will never supersede our natural laws. It is up to us to reclaim these beautiful, intricate laws of nature and weave them into our man-made laws in ways that will allow us all to have our basic needs met.

The rain will keep falling.

Rain. Will you be able to use it to support your food security? Or will it flood and erode the land you depend on for food production while on its way to be sold to the highest non-essential bidder or to be carelessly dumped into the ocean? The answer is up to us.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. —Ben Franklin

1. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_1701-1750/ab_1750_bill_20120606_amended_sen_v96.html