The pollution of my home town
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Posted on April 21, 2007
Filed Under Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Longtime visitors to this site may remember that I am from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, area, have an enormous affection for Lake Michigan and the sacredness of the Great Lakes, as well as a deep and abiding love of rivers.
Whenever I visit Wisconsin now, and that is frequently, there is no way to avoid news of just how contaminated an area this is. As soon as we went from snowstorm to Spring, as soon as temperatures approached 65 and 70, so too arrived the brown haze settling over the city and spreading out over Lake Michigan.
And then this sad news. Our Kinnickinnic River, affectionately called ‘KK,’ has made it onto the list of the top ten most endangered rivers in the US by the American Rivers organization in DC. If you click and read this article, it may dishearten you as much as me, how we could so horribly violate this precious resource — and this is repeated all across this once pristine land.
Then, today, this top story on the front page — the collapse of some of Lake Michigan’s fish species – and why — the arrival of invasive species that are destroying the lower end of the lake food chain on which these species depend.
Like the goby, which arrived around 1993 in the ballast of a ship, probably from the Caspian Sea.
But that wasn’t the end of it. In early April, storm waters overwhelmed the sewer system in Milwaukee, which happens all too often, and some 399 millions gallons of raw sewage was dumped into local rivers, the Milwaukee and the Menomonee, which runs just two blocks from my old homestead, and on into Lake Michigan.
I remembered this story when I went for my first run along the hiking trail by the Menomonee last week. At one stretch, the stench of raw sewage was so strong it burned my eyes and I thought I would gag.
This river of my childhood, this river where in recent years 
I have walked hand-in-hand with my Godson, now almost 9 years old.
And then this article, about the raw sewage spills into another of our precious waterways, Honey Creek. Some of this story is about developers and others who leak this stuff illegally, to save a few bucks. You have to wonder about the state of the souls of these people.
We have such a beautiful Earth, and its waters are the reason there is life here at all. When I think about how we have disrespected our waters, I feel so deeply how this is a violation of all life, including our own. In the process of contaminating these sources of our life, we are contaminating Life. We are being made sick, physically and spiritually, and increasingly insensitive to that in which we live and move and have our being. And that is the road to ecological disaster.
Where is hope in this? If we can’t find again that love and reverence for all this planet has given us, it will destroy us — not because it does not want us to live, but because it will no longer be able to tolerate our existence. Hope lies in recovering our sense of the sacredness of the Earth and our proper place within it, that awareness that makes it impossible to continue this destruction — out of love, out of reverence, out of gratitude.
Photo credit: stzydek’s photos
Technorati Tags: Lake Michigan, Kinnickinnic River, Honey Creek, raw sewage spills, contamination of rivers and lakes, goby, invasive species
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