The Pennsylvania Council of Churches has long been a champion for protecting our water resources. We have been a member of the Choose Clean Water Coalition nearly since its inception, and more recently have worked with the Clean Water for All Campaign.
The introduction to our resource, Clean Water: A Primer for People of Faith, opens with the following statement:
Every major religious tradition holds beliefs with regard to the importance of water. According to The Water Page[i]:
Water has a central place in the practices and beliefs of many religions for two main reasons. Firstly, water cleanses. Water washes away impurities and pollutants, it can make an object look as good as new and wipe away any signs of previous defilement.
Water not only purifies objects for ritual use, but can make a person clean, externally or spiritually, ready to come into the presence of his/her focus of worship. Secondly, water is a primary building block of life. Without water there is no life, yet water has the power to destroy as well as to create. We are at the mercy of water just as we are at the mercy of our God or gods. The significance of water manifests itself differently in different religions and beliefs but it is these two qualities of water that underlie its place in our cultures and faiths.
[i] The Water Page, Water in Religion, http://www.africanwater.org/religion.htm.
This Primer provides background information, messaging, and information on how you can advocate for our water resources.
Our work has focused on several areas:
- Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking (resolution for moratorium)
- Pipelines
- Safe drinking water
- Clean rivers and streams
Miscellaneous Resources
Here is a message delivered at a press conference in March 2018: Protect our Water/Clean Water for Pennsylvania
Op-ed in supporting adequate federal funding for clean water (February 2018): Clean Water Needs Our Support
Why the Faith Community Should Be Part of Clean Water Efforts…and What You Can Do to Help (slides from presentation aimed at secular partners/organizations wanting to partner with the faith community)
Stories provide powerful witness to what clean water means for us. While we continue to request submission of your stories–written or in video form–here are some stories we’ve received so far.
From Barbara VanHorn (Harrisburg):
“Water is life”, they say at Standing Rock and all across the country as they try to block pipelines, fight fracking and resist the contamination of our water. “Water is life”, we say in Lancaster County as we are arrested in the nuns’ cornfield for trying to block the start of the
pipeline through the chapel. Twenty-three of us were taken to jail and held overnight and seven of us are still awaiting trial as the state tries to stop us from using the justification defense based on the Pennsylvania Constitution. I’m 86 years old and this is the fourth time ‘ve been arrested for trying to defend what I think is sacred.
Many of us became very concerned when unconventional drilling, fracking, invaded our state. With the help of Clean Water Action we organized Gas Truth, an activist group, to fight back. We rallied, we marched, we protested and we testified to DEP, DCNR, FERC, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and our legislators. When that didn’t work we carried water to Dimock, fought to save the trailer park in Jersey Shore and went to Washington to be arrested with hundreds of others trying to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline.
I celebrated my 80th birthday with a birthday party in front of the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg. Governor Corbett ignored us just as he did at his inauguration and throughout his term as governor. Attending an informative retreat offered by the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, I learned of a new way to fight back from Mark and Malinda Clatterbuck, organizers of Lancaster Against Pipelines.
Those of us who joined this Lancaster County group met and trained and learned many new tactics for resisting. We built wooden stands in the path of the pipeline and when the paths were moved the stands were moved. We helped the nuns build their chapel and we committed to peaceful, nonviolent protest to protect this sacred place. And that is why, when the huge machines came to dig up the cornfield we were there blocking the way and singing and being arrested one by one. We are still resisting as more and more people are being arrested and charged as we sing and dance on the pipeline and offer cookies to the workers, stick arms in pipes and whatever we can peacefully do to halt this ongoing threat to our state, our country and our planet.
From Ann Van Dyke (Harrisburg):
I grew up in Bradford County which is sometimes referred to as ‘ground zero for fracking.’ My cousin and his sons run the dairy farm that my great grandparents established and where my cousin, my Dad and my grandfather were born. One wonderful, natural, fresh water spring has supplied the world’s purest water to the family household and the farm for about 160 years. When other springs and wells go try during droughts, for generations people have known they can come there for pure and abundant water. Out of concern for that precious land and water, my cousin chose not to lease the land for fracking. Neighbors, however, have…creating fractures that go under the house, the barn and come perilously close to the spring. My relatives are spread all across the country, and we all worry about that spring.
From Gail Landers (New Covenant United Church of Christ, Williamsport):
Water Works in our Wonderful World
Our consumption of water, the essence of life, encompasses so many facets of daily life: from the food we grow and eat and depend upon having as a convenient resource; the recreation we enjoy (swimming, fishing, boating); the manufacturing of recycled products and others to housekeeping (cleaning and laundering); personal hygiene and most of all drinking.
Water is our backyard in a creek just ten feet away from our home foundation. It enters the Susquehanna River just two miles downstream and continues to the Chesapeake Bay, ultimately the Atlantic Ocean. From a small run upstate near the New York State line, it has its beginnings.
Sometimes this fresh water invades our dwelling causing flooding. It’s the price we pay for living in nature and having upstream neighbors who have contributed to significant run-off. It has certainly made us more environmentally aware and caring of others in similar situations.
Fish, foul, mink and ground hogs, even a few hellbenders reside in these waters. It’s our promise that the stream continues to maintain adequate clean life. Do we drink the creek water? We probably could but we reserve a partially filled jar for occasional family baptisms. The water of life continues.
From Mark Zakutansky (Albrightsville):
My river story well has a lot of stories but when I realized how much I cherished our rivers and what it meant for them to become less polluted; starts off not in Pennsylvania but in West Virginia. But there is a reason why West Virginia made an impact and made me realize more of what was in my own backyard. It started off with my first ever river festival in Albright, WV along the Cheat River. I noticed the creek bed behind the camping area to have a slight orange tint along its banks and alongside the mountain in which it flowed from or at least from where the pollution flowed from; this wasn’t a huge noticeable thing to me and I didn’t realize how much this creek alone influenced the river it flowed into. After a morning full of getting ready for the river day and setting shuttle; I inquired to a friend, who seemed to know a lot about our rivers and the issues that they faced, about what I had seen. He quickly responded with all this information of what it was, acid mine drainage (AMD) and that I would see more of it when we got on the river. And sure golly was he right, so many orange rocks along the river and its banks. How could this happen, what was causing this? Of course I inquired and I was faced with even more information and along with places I was already familiar with; some of our local streams back home in PA that also deal with mine pollution. Mostly in my area along the Lehigh River and its creeks that flow into it, as well as other creeks surrounding the area; coal mine drainage is prevalent; more so on one of my favorite little creeks to paddle.
My first time paddling that creek, the Nescopeck, there was a little laughter with a comment “don’t swallow that water, spit it out!”. This was continuously said throughout our day on the water and until this day still rings true; best have your ear plugs and nose plugs if you plan on paddling this creek.
For me I have been faced with plenty of ear and sinus infections since I started paddling; some I account for the water I paddle on; I honestly now don’t leave home without those ear or nose plugs and I have even taken it so far not to paddle a creek that I really enjoy paddling. As far as I am aware, the Nescopeck is a dead creek, not much lives there; at least on this section of which we paddle and when it rains, oh the gray and black the water turns. This color is due to the abandoned coal mine a few miles or so upstream of put-in.
I grew up here, I’ve known about the abandoned mines, the silt left behind, but I never knew the impact it would have on the future me, the me now. And the more places I go to paddle, the more I’m aware of the pollution that flows into our waterways; that lives amongst everything in our watersheds. Not only do we as humans, who depend on water to live but our ecosystems depend on clean water. And it’s not just mine drainage but its wastewater treatment water, its raw sewage and its water that flows through the streets during a rain storm that flows into our waterways. Clean water is not just a world issue, a state issue, a local issue; it’s a personal issue and one in which I hope will be resolved and I won’t have to worry about getting sick from paddling a river because I happen to get some water in my nose or my mouth.
Some may say, “stop paddling that creek or that river”; well if I did that, there wouldn’t be much to paddle, would there be? And I’m not about to stop paddling, it’s a part of me as much as I am a part of it; as goes for the river, it’s my second home away from home. And homes can get messy but they usually are tidy and livable; it doesn’t take decades for someone to do something about it.
Think about it, we are made of water, do you want to be putting polluted water in your body? Do you want to get sick because water treatment plants missed something or couldn’t hold the capacity to treat that said pollution that entered the body of water in which you get your water from? I sure don’t!