Letter from the Water

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” W.H. Auden

Photo by Levi XU on Unsplash

Dear human friend,

I will begin my letter to you with a quote.

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” The British poet W. H. Auden once wrote.

Water, dear human friend, is my name. The burden, which lies upon me, dear human friend, is heavy to carry all by myself.

Kindly, dear human friend, I ask for your support, shared weight is half as heavy.

The quote above puts it as it is. I am essential for your survival, for any life on Earth. My very existence on earth is limited, and my purity is under constant pressure. I understand very well, that my quality is important for your supply of drinking water, food production and recreational water use.

You can find me both, under the ground –as groundwater — and on the surface of the Earth — as surface water.

As groundwater, I evolve from rain, seeping deep into the earth, filling the cracks, crevices, and porous spaces from down below. You cannot see me. Still, I am of huge importance to you. Many of you already rely on me, as groundwater. You pump me up to use me as drinking water. For some of you, I am the only freshwater source there is.

As surface water, I cover about 70 percent of the Earth surface. I fill everything that you can see as blue from outer space, your rivers, lakes and oceans. I, the surface water, come from freshwater sources all over the Planet. And as well as many of you rely on groundwater, even more of you use me as freshwater supply.

In 1972 the Clean Water Act became law in the United States. This law had in mind to protect me, by setting a limit on chemicals, which you are allowed to dump into my rivers, lakes and Oceans. It also dealt with the support and treatment of my waterways by public organizations.

You passed the Clean Water Act due to your research. You were kind of frightened, after you had found out about the chain of occurrences, which polluted drinking water would have upon you. I am talking about infection, disease, and even death. Once contaminated, using me for cleaning a wound increases the risk of it to become…