Our bodies are over 60% percent water. We can only live a
matter of days without water. Water covers 71% of the surface of this planet.
It should be no surprise that people attempting to live
according to traditional, earth centered, non western value systems hold water
to be sacred. Call them Indians, native peoples, first nation, aboriginal,
tribal, many of these communities still hold to ideals that see water as the sacred
blood of the earth, as the first medicine. And so it should be—all life depends
on access to clean water.
Water is a polar molecule, making it a wonderful solvent,
readily dissolving any substance that has an atomic electrical charge. Liquid
water is fluid, and can easily transport any other fluid substance in it, even
if that substance is non polar, having no electrical charge, and can’t dissolve
in the water. Even if that substance is crude oil.
Crude oil is made up of a mixture of many different
fractions of hydrocarbons, ranging from the heavy end with things like asphalt
and paraffin, to the light end with things like the methane and propane, some
of the constituents of natural gas. Crude oil contains other substances,
related to the hydrocarbons we burn in our cars and furnaces, things you might
have experimented with in organic chemistry class, like the aromatics benzene,
toluene, and xylene. And even though the aromatics come from crude oil,
something we typically think of as insoluble in water, these light fractions
are soluble in water. They also have a low atomic weight, so they evaporate
into the air quite readily as well. And worst of all, they are carcinogenic.
This is the kind of thing you think about when you learn
that an oil transporting pipeline is about to be built through a river that is
your source of drinking water. You think about the pipeline leaking, and the
heavy fraction of the crude oil, being denser than freshwater, sinking to the
bottom of the river, virtually impossible to clean up, and the lighter more
soluble fractions traveling with the water to be taken up by municipal water
systems down stream. You think about how common it is for pipelines to break,
and in isolated rural areas how long it takes for people to notice.
These are the things I was thinking about as I stood in the
rain attending a solidarity event for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North
Dakota. The Standing Rock tribe has been protesting the fast track approval of
the Dakota Access pipeline, its permitted path through off reservation sacred
sites, and its crossing of the Missouri River, the drinking water source for
the tribe and rural farmers and ranchers downstream. Native tribes from all
over north America have been converging on the protest encampment at the Sioux
reservation in a show of solidarity, and events like the one I attended,
organized by Wabenaki leaders here in Maine, are popping up nationwide. You
don’t have to be Native American to understand that water is sacred, though
watching the Wabenaki prayer ceremonies made me realize that I lost the
language of sacred connection many generations ago. Nor do you have to be a
scientist to understand the linkage of water pollution and illness, and
unfortunately I speak that language all too fluently.
Water is not unique in the universe, in fact the only reason
we have it hear on Earth is that it came here the same way all the other matter
on Earth did, as an aggregation of space dust and rocks. But water is what
makes this planet unique, and what makes life possible on this third rock from
the sun. The Standing Rock Sioux know it, and so do you.
References:
Yep, pipelines do leak into rivers: https://usresponserestoration.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/as-oil-sands-production-rises-what-should-we-expect-at-diluted-bitumen-dilbit-spills/
People say these pipelines don’t leak. Really? http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/25/487357502/canadian-oil-spill-threatens-drinking-water
Another one: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2015/01/150120-oil-spills-into-yellowstone-river/
A map of the pipelines: https://www.propublica.org/article/pipelines-explained-how-safe-are-americas-2.5-million-miles-of-pipelines
