YOU stand near the banks of one of the tributaries of the Boyne, and you wonder, as it thunders and roars and carries masses of branches and reeds with it, how in God's name we, in this country, can ever complain of a water shortage in summer. Can we not capture some of this great wealth? It is sometimes frightening in, its volume and force. And we send it all out to sea.
Is it not a fact that, in some other countries, arterial drainage also make provision for big holding reservoirs for some of this excess? Anyway, the citizen looking at such an abundance of an essential element in our lives must wonder what process of thought led to this profligate use of a valuable resource.
The other great water controversy is, of course, about pollution, and today the farmers get most of the blame - for the run off of excessive use of fertiliser, for the run off of slurry. A century ago the purity of our river water would have been sullied by mills and factories, situated on running water for its power driving virtues. In the North, it is hard to see how fish and other life survived the letting out of the putrid water from scutching ponds. It has been so for a long time, and not only in this country.
An English magazine recently ran a 90 years ago item about their own pollution problems: "As Lord Harewood remarked at a meeting of the Yorkshire Fishery Board recently, it is impossible for boards to do much because, though people were fined for offences of this nature, they persisted in their practices, and like the Sunday trader, found it paid better to pay the fines than reform ... Now, with our knowledge of disease and the part that contaminated water plays in carrying it, it seems childish not to insist on the benefit to the country at large of pure water. We insist on the value of pure butter, pure beer and so on; but not, curiously enough, on the presence of pure water in our streams. (From Country Life, February 1907).
There are two questions here holding on to a rich supply of water, and the quality of the same. Sewage is a whole item on its own. National Tree Week is almost on us. We surely could do with a Pure Water Week.