Magic water words

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
                      Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

Governor Dayton has been holding a series of Town Hall Meetings around Minnesota to call attention to our water pollution problems. He's asking for suggestions on how we can make a 25% improvement in Minnesota's "water quality" by the year 2025. We have three suggestions that we'll make here. One, or perhaps two, we've referred to in prior postings, but we want to be unequivocal and explicit here. We think these suggestions are not only helpful, but essential, so we've included a bit of background and commentary to go with them.

Minnesota's waters flow to the Arctic, Atlantic and Gulf

Photo by J. Harrington

• First, mandate that the Minnesota Department of Transportation (for state roads) and each Minnesota county (for all other roads) install signs, where needed, identifying each watershed boundary and river being crossed by the road. In rural Minnesota we often see signs that say "Leaving So & So Soil and Water Conservation District," followed, a few hundred yards later by a sign that says "Entering So & So Soil and Water Conservation District." Each watershed needs similar identification, so folks will know who or what they're polluting when they throw empty cans, other litter, or cigarette butts from their vehicle windows. More hopefully, it will help us be aware of the beauty of the landscape and waterbody we're traversing. Many, but not all, river crossings are already identified. Few, if any, watershed boundary signs link landscapes to water bodies so folks know where they are in natural, bioregional instead of political boundary terms.






Sunrise River road crossing sign


Photo by J. Harrington



• Second, support creation of a Minnesota Waters' Lexicon of Water Words [MWLWW], including words old and contemporary, indigenous and immigrant, that refer to names and places, processes, persons and paraphernalia that give us a vocabulary we can use to talk about what makes our waters what they are. Take a look at this example using some English nature language that "highlight's what is being lost," or this one helps us talk about our food systems in sustainable terms.






• Next legislative session, undertake a major effort to complete full implementation of the Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework, first published in 2011. The Framework includes nicely organized table(s) of recommendations that can be used to keep track of progress.

[UPDATE: Submit your comments online if you wish at this link.]

Having spent much of our working life practicing and promoting water quality at a national, state, regional and local scale, starting with the development of pilot plans for managing water quality and land use relationships, we've been thinking about these issues for a long time. Then, a short while ago, we started to compile a list of "water words" from the wonderful Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, edited by Barry Lopez. More recently, we learned of the flap about the elimination of some nature words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary to "make room" for 21st century terms. People have long been fascinated by the potential power associated with naming (cf. Book of Genesis, 2:19), but are often dismayed by the complexity and bureaucratic terminology that has become a substitute for "ground truth" (liquid truth?) used by public agencies to describe Minnesota's waters and "stressors" that affect them. Here's an example from our own local watershed, the Sunrise River. We suppose a MWLWW will need to find a way to accommodate and translate such jargon (gorgon language?) into plain language. It will also need to look again at Thomas F. Waters two great books, The Streams and Rivers of Minnesota and Wildstream, A Natural History of the Free Flowing River. What else do you think needs to be included?

                     Eschatology of the Lexicon

By J. Allyn Rosser

They come down to us

rounding the corners of centuries

at an innocent jog, shedding letters

and most of the grand old meanings

to take on the sleek new hide

our day demands, a snappier

nap that can repel the stare

of a rather less tactful sun;

they come down to us com-

pounding, bounding in idiot

joy, they come with that trustful

tired old mutt look, that soft woof,

warm doggie sigh on the knee,

hoping for what? Some reason,

no doubt, to continue sounding.

Give me one good reason,

they come down to us saying,

as if we could have one without them.

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