Water Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink!

Greetings Friends :)

It has been a few weeks since I last tickled my keyboard. I have been thinking about water just lately. I live in the UK and we have a lot of it. We are surrounded by it and our land specifically in my location is flooded with it. Since November I have been travelling the few miles out of my city to a little bridge, Short Ferry Bridge to be exact which crosses over the landscape into the depths of sleepy Lincolnshire. It has it's own charm and beauty. Short Ferry Bridge acts as an overflow for the River Witham and over flow is exactly what has been taking place since November.

The landscape is water logged, flooded. I have never seen so many water birds in one place, it is like a vast lake when in reality it is flooded farmland. I go regularly to assess what is occurring and each week it gets worse. For local people it adds on an additional 20 miles to a journey. For the land owners their business is in tatters as well as having no access to their homes. No home no business!

A couple of weeks ago I read with horror the miss management of the water supply to local people in the South West of England specifically over 100 cases of waterborne Cryptosporidium. A nasty little parasite which causes diarrhoea, vomiting stomach cramps and weight loss. The statement released was the probable cause was a damaged air valve on private farmland. With the advise of keep boiling your water!

We live in 2024 in a society of mass global technology and a water infrastructure that is not fit for purpose. Here in my part of the world it has hardly stopped raining. Yesterday the sun came out for one day. Then today more rain.

I joined Global Water Intelligence today it is a leading publisher serving the international water industry. From my short time scanning the site and limited access to its publications it basically boils down to one thing. Water is available to drink if you have investments, cash, the pound, the dollar. And the British Water industry is skint! Well that's not exactly true, not really, their dividend pay-outs are still going strong but the water quality in many places is like the South West, deadly. Across the country the operational standards performances are well below standard and we are pumping more and more raw sewerage out to sea than ever before. The damage to our water ways and eco systems is basically beyond repair.

I'm wondering if it is time to take our own daily tests for our water? You know straight from our taps. Like a litmus test for drinking water. Maybe it is really time to do this so our children and babies and our older folk don't die of a nasty parasitic invasion through drinking water. Or maybe we need to stop drinking tap water altogether? The problem here is buying drinking water in plastic bottles, the over use of plastic, more and more plastic. When I was a kid we used glass bottles for everything and took them back to the off licence and got sixpence in return. You know in the bad old days! When we could drink water out of the tap and recycle our glass immediately and get a yummy bag of sweeties for our troubles.

Now the world is heating up, across Europe last year fire after fire after fire spreading across the landscape eating its way through our habitats. It is the 3rd of June today and here in the UK we are waiting for the rain to stop falling and the temperature to reach something that resembles summer, something like 18 degrees would do.

Our lands are flooding, our water polluted and in places deadly, the sun just does not want to shine. Now I'm no specialist on these things but come on, how bad is bad? We live on an island surrounded by water, it falls out of our sky like the heavens cant stop crying and our earth cannot soak it away. And we can not drink it! The United Kingdom is a highly developed nation that exerts considerable international, political, scientific and cultural influence. When we compare our nation to the rest of the developed world we are poor, like our water supply. And water is the life blood of all living things. Water is one of our most spiritual medicines for power and for life. In ancient times water was the source of spiritual energy of stability. Today in now what does water mean to you? Flooded lands maybe? Deadly drinking water maybe? Drought maybe? A week of sunshine and the water banns will surely follow.

My gasp is flabbered! All I see is, Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink! :(