Who Moved the Lake? An Inconvenient Tulare
Long ago, a shallow, marshy lake existed not far from the front window of my home. Its shores were thick with willows; its reach changed by miles with the seasons. Streams — what the Spaniards called arroyos — trickled down from the mountains to feed the lake. The arroyos meandered like untidy braids, sometimes ran dry in the summer, but water persisted in the lake all year long. Beautiful, in its own way.
If you live in California, you may have lost your lake, too.
At the historic Alviso Adobe Community Park, a sign explains that “Water and abundant food sources sustained the Ohlone population in the Pleasanton Valley.” The Ohlone Native Americans built boats and lived in huts made of tule, a type of reed that grew in the marsh (hence, tulare is a lake with tule).
That image seems so utterly foreign now.
Where my sprawling suburb rests on the former lake, residents complain of foundation cracks due to persistent settling and realtors refer to it as the structural integrity zone. Once plentiful artesian wells — those that defy gravity and burst upward like fountains —have dried up, only to be replaced by deeper and deeper wells pumping water for demand that increasingly exceeds supply. Some of those wells, we’ve recently discovered, exceed worrisome levels of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS — chemicals that accumulate in our bodies, essentially forever).
Of course, the latter problem resulted from the tens of millions of people who moved into the state over the last two centuries and their accompanying landfills and airports (the two most likely sources of PFAS). The lake was just collateral damage in the name of development; ditched and drained by early farmers, plundered from beneath by Spring Valley Water Company, and covered by housing.
In 1870, George Atkinson built a duck hunting lodge a convenient distance from the marsh; we call it the Century House. John Wesley Powell completed his geologic survey of the western states for the U.S. Government about that same time. Powell concluded that the arid West was not suitable for agricultural development, except for about 2% of the lands that were near water sources. He proposed conservation and low-density, open grazing.
The railroad companies did not agree with Powell’s views, instead citing a theory promoted by Professor Cyrus Thomas (a U.S. ethnologist and entomologist) who believed that agricultural development of land would change climate and cause higher amounts of precipitation, claiming that ‘rain follows the plow’, a theory which has since been largely discredited.
Powell would prophetically remark: “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.”
Who moved the lake? Well, no one specifically and everyone collectively. Everyone except the Ohlone, but that’s a different story. Does the lake matter? Probably not, but it’s a metaphor for our relationship with water.
The dominant cultural view of water is as a natural resource in isolation from the environment. It is something that can be extracted until exhausted, privately owned, and sold for profit. The idea of dominion has evolved from stewardship to control and domination. Our city’s little lake was optimized for agriculture, optimized into oblivion. Impressive as it may be to support so many people across the arid western states and generate billions of dollars worth of agriculture, the pace is not sustainable.
We magically believe continual growth is possible, natural resources are inexhaustible, if only we can exert more control over nature. That’s myopic — true in the near term, but flawed beyond that. The lake will never come back. Nor will many extirpated species. How do we move forward to a more sustainable future?
If you expect a solution from me, I’m sorry.
But I can offer you the advice of Dr. Anita Sanchez, author of the Four Sacred Gifts: Indigenous Wisdom for Modern Times. She would have us adopt the four sacred gifts, a set of teachings promulgated by a group of 27 Indigenous elders from North America, Tibet, Finland, and Africa.
- The power to forgive the unforgivable. The first step toward a more sustainable future is to forgive the ones responsible for the mistakes of the past, including ourselves. This forgiveness will free us from what Dr. Sanchez calls the “prison of animosity,” which allows us to refocus our energy on constructive healing work.
- The power of unity. Anything that happens to one person, place, or species affects the whole global ecosystem. We owe it to ourselves — and one another — to work toward a balanced solution for all: water, air, soil, human, and non-human.
- The power of healing. Because we are a part of the Earth — not apart from it — healing the planet starts with healing ourselves. As Sanchez puts it, “When we are good medicine to ourselves and each other, honoring the spirit that resides within us, the healing that results will be reflected in our external world.”
- The power of hope. Put simply, we cannot avert the threat of environmental catastrophe if we do not believe a better world is possible.
Excellent article on the corruption at Spring Valley Water Company, here. If that’s your thing, look up William Sharon and his son-in-law William Newlands.
