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Wild Water Wisdom WorkshopSummary: Description, preparation, what to bring, etc. for Understanding Water workshop on San Jose Creek June 11th 2003, 9am-5pm and June 13th 8 am-1pm. Workshop has already happened, but there's a lot of great reading on this page... |
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Come together and lets see what a short, beautiful stretch of San Jose Creek has to tell us about how natural waters change as they cycle through nature, and how we're meant to fit into this.
The way to understand water is to kneel at the feet of the master.
The master can be found at work everywhere outside your door, especially at the nearest, nicest, natural waters.
Immerse yourself in these consciously, fully, and regularly and an understanding of what water has to tell you will soak in.
As much of the following as we can fit in.
If we can manage it we'll take advantage of our presence on the creek doing samples to produce as complete as possible a profile of the 15-40 waters we sample, including for each water:
(there is a early, primitive version of such a profile at Water test results- Maruata)
By invitation to Wilderness Youth Project staff and key volunteers. If you would like to invite someone outside this group, please check. Please RSVP to Mark so we can ensure an adequate amount of water testing supplies. There is space for 10-18 people total.
$100 individual, $200 institutional, or trade for WYP programs.
We'll approach the topic from a wide range of perspectives: hydrologist, microbiologist, plant physiologist, chemist, backpacker, and wild nature spirit. If you can track across this whole spectrum you'll get the most out of it.
The more of the background info below you understand (or even have been exposed to) before coming the more you'll get out of it. You could spend as little as an hour just opening every document and glancing at it or as much as a week reading everything through and thoroughly understanding it.
This
stuff is worth reading all the way through:
This stuff will add more depth if you can scan or read any of it:
The disease has been referred to as “beaver fever” because of a presumed link to those water-dwelling animals known to be carriers. However, it has been suggested that it is more likely that humans have carried the parasite into the wilderness and that beavers may actually be the victims. In particular, there is a growing amount of data showing that beavers living downstream from campgrounds have a high Giardia infection rate compared with a near-zero rate for beavers living in more remote areas.
In any case, beavers can and do contract giardiasis. Being water-dwellers, they are thus able to contaminate water more directly than an animal that defecates on the ground.
Other animals that can harbor Giardia are bighorn sheep, cats, cattle, coyotes, deer, dogs, elk, muskrats, pet rabbits, raccoons, and squirrels. But not horses and domestic sheep. And naturally occurring infections have not been found in most wild animals including badgers, bears, bobcats, ferrets, lynxes, marmots, moose, porcupines, rabbits, and skunks.
How many cysts does it take to get the disease? Theoretically only one, but volunteer studies have shown that 10 or so are required to have a reasonable probability of contracting giardiasis: About one-third of persons ingesting 10 – 25 cysts get detectable cysts in their stools.
However, most infected individuals have no symptoms at all! In one incident studied by the CDC, disruption in a major city’s water disinfection system allowed the entire population to consume water heavily contaminated with Giardia. Yet only 11 percent of the exposed population developed symptoms even though 46 percent had organisms in their stools. These figures suggest that (a) even when ingesting large amounts of the parasite, the chance of contracting giardiasis is less than 1 in 2, and (b) if you are one of the unlucky ones to contract it, the chance of having symptoms is less than 1 in 4. But perhaps the most telling statistic is that drinking heavily contaminated water resulted in symptoms of giardiasis in only 1 case in 9.
Recall that San Francisco water can contain a concentration of 0.12 cysts per liter [24], a figure now seen to be higher than that measured anywhere in the Sierra. San Francisco city officials go to great lengths to assure their citizens that the water is safe to drink, and if true—as it most assuredly must be—this comparison alone is quite revealing.
From Reuters on CNN, Wednesday, September 3, 2003
GENEVA (Reuters) -- Major cities should focus efforts and funds on conserving forests which naturally purify their drinking water, saving them from spending billions of dollars on water treatment facilities, a study published this week showed.
The study of 105 big cities by the World Bank and the ecology organization the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-International) showed that one-third of them, including New York, Tokyo, Barcelona and Melbourne, get much of their water via protected forests.
Preserving these forests -- which reduce landslides, erosion and sediment; improve water purity by filtering pollutants, and in some cases capture and store water -- is a cost-effective way to provide clean drinking water, the study "Running Pure" said.
"For many cities, time is running out. Protecting forests around water catchment areas is no longer a luxury but a necessity," said David Cassells, senior environmental specialist for forest resources with the World Bank.
"When they are gone, the costs of providing clean and safe drinking water to urban areas will increase dramatically." (...more)
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Meet at Art's and count the general and fecal coliform test plates from Wednesday, take digital photos, enter and collate data from sample collection, enter in spreadsheet, analyze and discuss, brainstorm ways to share this info.
Questions? Comments? Volunteer? Call Mark or Art
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