WHAT’S UP WITH WATER?
Guarding Waters from Source to Sink: FromAncient Gods to the Clean Water Rule
Eric J. Fitch
and Poseidon god of the Sea. Needless to say, there were deity/protectors of all aspects of water. In the Western world which transitioned from polytheism to the monotheistic Judeo-Christian belief system nature became desacralized. Instead of springs, wetlands, rivers, lakes, etc. being sacred, they became mere things, created for the use of man, we being God’s special creation. As humans gained in numbers, technology and consumption, any protections afforded water resources came from
and policy standpoint for state and local governments to install policies that provided some protections for water resource supply and quality. Protection varied greatly from local jurisdiction and from state to state. Some federal agencies such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and others had modest roles in protecting the waters of the United States, but with limited authority and jurisdiction. In other words, most water resources were open for
IN MANY ANCIENT FAITHS, significant aspects of nature down to specific locations/sites were within the domain and usually under the active protection of deities/spirits/supernatural beings. In Chinese traditional religions, each of the major rivers had a patron deity or deities: Ehuang, Longmu and Nuying are the goddesses of the Xiang River and Hebo the god of the Yellow River. Each of the Four Seas was protected by a Dragon King and the Shuixian Zunwang (the Honorable Kings of the Water Immortals) oversaw aspects of the great floods. In the Egyptian myth, no less than 10 deities had aspects of rulership of water with aspects of the Nile under the province of one or more deities. In Koshinto or the oldest version of Shinto, the Kami or nature deities indwell in in many places in nature especially bodies of water. The ancient Greeks and Romans may have surpassed all faiths ancient and modern in their development of a hierarchy of gods and goddesses including those whose domains subsumed aspects of the hydrologic world. The Nymphs had had localities covered with the Naiades indwelling and protecting fresh water bodies, the Nereides were Nymphs of the Sea and the Oceanides being the protectors of freshwater sources. Regions/rivers/watersheds had their own deities and Acheolous was the god of all rivers. At the top was Oceanus the Titan and the source of all fresh water 220,000,000+ acres of U.S. wetlands (excluding Alaska) have been degraded or destroyed. Since the 16th century, more than half of the estimated original
their value as resources to current and future people. Public policy, law and economics became the fora for water resources management and protection. Water resources
- if managed - were done so under local
overuse and abuse without even the fear of God (gods) standing in anyone’s way. Circumstances had gotten so bad nationally that by the late 1960s - early 1970s, the federal government felt compelled to act and consolidate authority and jurisdiction for protection of water quality and to a degree the water resource systems themselves under what has come to be called the federal Clean Water Act. Under the EPA in conjunction with the USACE, the USFWS, and other federal departments and agencies, a systematic approach was developed to protect water quality and resources. Federalization of environmental protection and EPA jurisdiction was amplified under subsequent statutes, amendments and regulations. The jurisdictional net was
authority with little thought or effort going to system-wide management of watersheds or groundwater reserves. Settlement of the American frontier involved massive transformation of landscapes and their hydrological processes. Since the 16th century, more than half of the estimated original 220,000,000+ acres of U.S. wetlands (excluding Alaska) have been degraded or destroyed. Forests were cleared and grasslands plowed under. Rivers and streams were engineered and systems were created to collect and dispose of municipal and industrial wastes by concentration into receiving waters under the mistaken doctrine that “the solution to pollution is dilution”. It took well into the 19th century from a legal
September 2019
VOLUME 21 - NUMBER 5 | 27
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