Agraria Journal Winter 2021

ROBERT SZUCS / WWW. GRASSHOPPERGEOGRAPHY.COM This stylized watershed map of the U.S. illustrates the interconnectedness of our waterways. I have a diehard bioregionalist friend, a forester, whose watershed consciousness is acute. He refuses to desecrate water by using a flush toilet. Though he’s no longer young, if an outhouse or composting toilet’s unavailable he still will go out in the backyard and dig a cat hole. My friend’s hygiene may seem outlandish. But a visitor from another planet, seeing how essential water is to life on Earth and watching us defecate in potable water, dump industrial effluents into rivers, and raise thirsty luxury crops like almonds in dry lands, might conclude that a large cohort of our species shares a death wish while some few others trouble themselves to show respect for the substance without which life can be no more. As droughts persist across vast regions and water becomes scarcer, the power of thirst and the thirst for power meet in dire conflict. As settlements have burgeoned and water usage and populations have grown, the demand for water has led to local and regional scarcities, interbasin expropriations, and wars. Commodification of water has priced this life essential beyond the means of marginalized people. The struggle’s on. Multitudes are mobilizing to protect their waters. “Not in my watershed, you don’t!” is a salient declaration of place defense. It’s about saving the parts to save the whole, starting where we are with what we know. However, because watersheds aren’t discrete, we’re all in this together. The logic of watershed protection must travel upstream to the divides and follow the watercourses all the way down. We must understand, and assume responsibility for, our households’ and settlements’ effects on the waters of the world. The maxim is that you shouldn’t expect a fish to explain water. As the medium of fishly existence water is just a given. Since globalized industrial civilization has until lately distanced us from sensing our utter dependence on fundamentals like water, soil, and the ecologies they support, watershed sapience is obscure. Until recently, plumbed, urbanized human beings have been mostly unconscious about their dwelling in watersheds and the provenance of their water. Tracing your water’s path from the tap back to its source is tricky. In far too many urban places watershed consciousness is aroused by the presence of poisons as gross as those that afflicted the householders of Flint or as insidious as parts per million of the PFAS chemicals now making headlines. There’s also less tragic creative, corrective urban watershed awareness. City water defenders paint slogans alongside sewer gratings telling where those waters wind up. Self-appointed, intrepid mappers and bioregional docents lead hikes tracing buried watercourses and advocate the daylighting of creeks. In the woodburban country sprawl where I live, signs indicating the watershed boundaries of inland lakes appear by the county roads. Close in, what does watershed governance look like? In many American places, the county drain commissioner is the local watershed czar. Decisions they make such as issuing permits for drain tiles, dredging, canals, and culverts, and requiring septic system inspections and contractors’ gestures towards erosion control all have to do with watershed health. Maybe you summer on a cherished lake and belong to AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 7