Water

In this episode of The Green Flame, we speak with Will Falk. Will is a writer, lawyer, environmental activist and former collaborator of Deep Green Resistance News Service. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens to Nature. In the fall of 2013, he began traveling to support environmental causes he felt passionate about, endeavor which took him to places such as the Unist’ot’en Camp on the unceded territories of the Unist’ot’en Clan of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in central British Columbia, to the Big Island of Hawai’i, to pinyon-juniper forests and across the Great Basin among other points of interest. ...

by Rebecca Wildbear The first time I was invited to speak to nature in my late twenties, I walked into the oak-hickory forest near the Blue Ridge Mountains, skeptical but eager. A former Outward Bound guide and a Wilderness Therapist, I loved nature and preferred being there to anywhere. I biked and backpacked, kayaked and rock climbed, always longing to be closer in some way, but I didn’t know how. It had never occurred to me that I could have a real conversation. ...

By Will Falk and Sean Butler Photo: 2009 algae bloom in western Lake Erie. Photo by Tom Archer. It should be clear to anyone following the events surrounding attempts by the citizens of Toledo, OH, with help from nonprofit law firm the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund ( CELDF), to protect Lake Erie with the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, that the American legal system and all levels of government in their current form exist to protect corporations’ ability to destroy nature in the name of profit and protect those corporations from outraged citizens injured by corporate activities. ...

by Dahr Jamail / Truthout - reprinted with permission / Image: NSIDC I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I’ve been circling for thousands of years and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? — Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours ...

By Elisabeth Robson / Art for Culture Change The catastrophic flooding across the midwest isn’t getting much coverage on the coasts, but it is a multibillion $ disaster for multiple states and indigenous nations. Over a million wells may be contaminated. Farmers will lose their farms. The top soil is washing away. The cattle losses have yet to be tallied but are likely to be huge. 8 EPA superfund sites have been inundated and no one knows what toxic nastiness is washing into the ground and water from those sites. And of course all the little ways toxins make their way into the water from inundated septic systems, landfill sites, dumps, oil on the ground, and flooded energy infrastructure. ...

by Diana Manzo / Intercontinental Cry Este artículo está disponible en español aquí San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Oaxaca, Mexico — Twelve years ago in the verdant Ocotlán Valley of Mexico, a group of men and women of Zapotec origin watched as their crops of vegetables and flowers began to wither away. A long drought seemed destined to turn their fertile valley into a desert area. But through a rainwater harvesting technique, they created a series of “absorption wells,” and since then life has re-emerged in this remote region in the South of Mexico. ...

by Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Last week, I was invited to join a Sacred Water Run-Walk in Nevada by Chief Johnnie Bobb of the Western Shoshone National Council. Chief Bobb attended the Sacred Water, Sacred Forests gathering back in May, and we exchanged contact information. I decided to attend last minute after his phone call, and gathered my supplies and energies. It is a 14 hour drive from my home in Oregon to the area the walk was to take place, so I took two days to make the drive. I stopped along the way and purchased as much food and supplies as I could afford, although I didn’t know exactly what was needed. ...

Featured image: Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. © Michelle McCarron by Will Falk / Voices for Biodiversity I need to come clean. When I joined Colorado River Ecosystem v. Colorado, the first-ever federal lawsuit to seek personhood and the rights of nature for a major ecosystem, my intentions were not completely sincere. The truth is, I never thought we had a chance in hell. I saw the lawsuit as an opportunity to guide concerned people through a process that would shatter their false hopes, replace them with experiential knowledge of the vast difficulties inherent in working for change within the legal system and catalyze more effective action. ...

Featured image: Great Basin National Park from Spring Valley, Nevada by Great Basin Water Network Ely, Nevada: A broad coalition of Nevadans committed to protecting the state’s water resources are declaring victory in their opposition to the SNWA groundwater pipeline. They applaud a ruling by the Nevada State Engineer denying all water rights applications for the project. Great Basin Water Network and White Pine County say the decision is essentially a death-knell for the roughly 300-mile pipeline proposal. These groups oppose SNWA’s proposed groundwater export and pipeline project because it would cause catastrophic long term environmental harm to some of Nevada’s most pristine and treasured areas, and because it would cause long-term economic devastation to rural communities throughout eastern Nevada. Following favorable decisions in Nevada’s District and Supreme Courts, it appears that the Nevada State Engineer agrees. ...

Selling water to Nestlé, Crystal Geyser and others could strain aquifers. by Jane Braxton Little / High Country News Mount Shasta reigns over Siskiyou County, a commanding presence even when cloaked in clouds. The snow on its flanks percolates into a vast underground aquifer of volcanic tunnels and bubbling springs. Steeped in legend and celebrated for its purity, Shasta water is almost as mysterious as its namesake California mountain. Little is known about how much is actually stored there or how it moves through the subsurface fractures. ...