Protecting God’s Creation

Part 1–Introduction

The Story of the Good Samaritan was the way Jesus answered the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” Using a Samaritan as the hero of the story forced the lawyer to see the world not in the arbitrary classifications and hierarchies created by humans but rather to see the world through God’s eyes and the lens of love. As leader of the Sherwood Green Team, I am asking each of you to ask yourself the same question the lawyer asked of Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” For it is within this lens that we will explore our natural world, God’s gift to us; and seek ways to heal, repair, and mend what is broken.

Since it was water that brought us to this moment in time in Sherwood’s history–water rushing down a hill scouring the land behind the church and the water of baptism that binds us together as a community of Christ, I thought it may be a good idea to take a deeper dive (pun intended) into water.

Water may be the first, and for some, the only chemical formula you know–H2O. That translates to two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But where did the hydrogen and oxygen come from, and how did they combine to make water and how did that water find its way to earth and inside each one of us?

Here is what we know. The hydrogen for water came from the Big Bang and the Oxygen from dying stars. As Carl Sagan said, “We are made of star stuff”.  There is a lot of water in space bound up in asteroids, meteors and comets. When our sun formed, it was a hot mess, spewing solar winds all over the place. Earth formed, 4.5 billion years ago as dry, rocky planet.

As a reminder, science is a never-ending quest for knowledge. New knowledge can confirm older knowledge or render that old knowledge wrong or incomplete. For a while now, scientists believed that the earth was watered by asteroids. New research has recently emerged that is turning that theory on its head. Scientists have found that some of the rocks that make up earth contain hydrogen and oxygen necessary to make water. They theorize that, under pressure, these rocks may have melted in the earth’s mantle releasing water that erupted out as vapor, cooled, condensed, and fell to earth as rain filling in all the nooks and crannies with water from asteroids adding about 5% of the total volume.

While it’s not exactly Moses striking a rock and water gushing out like in Exodus, but in Genesis, first there was light and then water was separated from the land. And it is a good thing because water is essential for all living things.

Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%. 

Part 2–The Water Cycle

All living things on earth rely on water. You can go a month without food, but only a couple of days without water. God has gifted us 332.5 million cubic miles of water on earth. Think of a cubic mile as a swimming pool that is one mile long, one mile wide and one mile deep. Most of the water is hiding in plain sight. 96% of the earth’s water fills oceans, seas and bays. This is salt water. The remaining 2.5% is found in freshwater lakes, rivers, underground, frozen as glaciers, in the atmosphere as water vapor, and in plants and animals, including you and me.

While the volume of water on earth is fixed, it is always moving, in what we call The Water Cycle. You may remember learning about evaporation, transpiration (plant sweat), and precipitation in school. A drop of water may spend 3,000 years in the ocean before evaporating into the air as water vapor. As water vapor, it can last about 9 days before heading back down as rain, snow, sleet, or hail. If it falls as snow onto a glacier, it could stay there for hundreds of thousands of years. The oldest water found in ice was dated to 2.7 million years old. In the ground, it could last a few months before being taken up by a plant or finding its way into a secure underground aquifer.

There is no away in nature. Everything is recycled and reused. Nothing is wasted. There is no away in God either. As my mom is fond of saying, “God don’t make junk.”

Dinosaurs made their appearance on earth about 230 million years ago. And for about 186 million years they had a good run, until, well, you know, the asteroid. To make it all those 186 million years, (for comparison, humans have been on the earth for a measly 6 million years), those dinosaurs had to drink water, and they did. Scientists believe that every molecule of water on earth passed through the kidney of at least one dinosaur.

That means that each and every glass of water we drink once was inside a dinosaur.

Part 3–Reducing Water Waste

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. That adage certainly nails it. The earth is a water planet. 71% of the surface is covered with water, but, as we learned last week, 97% of the water on earth is salty—that means that only 2.6% of the water on earth is fresh water, the kind we can drink. But all fresh water isn’t created equal: 69% is frozen in glaciers, 30% is underground, and less than 1% is in lakes, rivers, and swamps. And it isn’t all distributed equally throughout the world either. The Great Lakes of the United States account for a whopping 20% of the total fresh surface water on earth. They aren’t named “Great” for nothing.

So, we have a fixed amount of water. It is always moving from one form to another, one place to another through the water cycle, used and reused. There is a lot of it, but most of it is not drinkable. Yet, every living thing needs it to live, but availability varies considerably. God certainly has a sense of humor. We are given enough—more than enough actually—to satisfy our collective needs, but it is up to us to make sure that those needs are indeed met. Therein lies the rub.

According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 3 people worldwide do not have access to safe drinking water. Unsurprisingly, 80% of all diseases in the developing world are water related. 3 billion people lack basic handwashing facilities with soap and water at home and every year, 297 000 children under 5 years die due to diarrhea linked to inadequate washing.

More ominous still is the specter of scarcity. By 2025, the United Nations estimates that 30% of the world’s population residing in 50 countries will face water shortage. Right now, we are almost 8 billion souls sharing the earth’s water. By 2100, that number will rise to 11 billion. This isn’t relegated to faraway lands. Just last week, the U.S. began rationing of water supplies up and down the Colorado River which services a population of 40 million people.

On average, every person in the U.S. uses about 150 gallons of water per day. In France, that number is 77 gallons, India 38 gallons, and Mali 3 gallons. Folks in Arizona and throughout the American West are being forced to cut their usage. We can voluntarily do the same to show thanks to God for the gift of water and love for our neighbors near and far.

1. Check your toilet for leaks. 
Put a few drops of food coloring in your toilet tank. If, without flushing, the coloring begins to appear in the bowl, you have a leak that may be wasting more than 100 gallons of water a day.

2. Put a plastic bottle in your toilet tank or buy a new efficient toilet.
Put an inch or two of sand or pebbles in the bottom of a one-liter bottle to weigh it down. Fill the rest of the bottle with water and put it in your toilet tank, safely away from the operating mechanism. In an average home, the bottle may save five gallons or more of water every day without harming the efficiency of the toilet. If your tank is big enough, you may even be able to put in two bottles.

3. Take shorter showers.
A typical shower uses five to ten gallons of water a minute.
Limit your showers to the time it takes to soap up, wash down, and rinse off.

4. Install water-saving shower heads or flow restrictors.
Your hardware or plumbing supply store stocks inexpensive shower heads or flow restrictors that will cut your shower flow to about three gallons a minute instead of five to ten. They are easy to install, and your showers will still be cleansing and refreshing.

5. Turn off the water while brushing your teeth and shaving.

6. Check faucets and pipes for leaks.
Even a small drip can waste 50 or more gallons of water a day.

7. Use your automatic dishwasher and washing machine for full loads only.
Every time you run your dishwasher, you use about 25 gallons of water. Your automatic washing machine uses 30 to 35 gallons per cycle.

8. Don’t let the faucet run while you clean vegetables.
Rinse your vegetables instead in a bowl or sink full of clean water.

9. Plant drought-resistant trees and plants.
Many beautiful trees and plants thrive without irrigation.

10. Use a broom to clean driveways, sidewalks,
and steps.
Using a hose wastes hundreds and hundreds of gallons of water.

Part 4–Erosion

What do the Grand Canyon, Great Lakes, and New Orleans all have in common? They were all shaped and formed by the movement of water.

Like a toddler, water doesn’t like to stay still. It is always moving from one form to another, ice melting to water evaporating into vapor. And it is always moving from one place to another downhill, underground, through the ocean via currents, waves, and tides overhead in clouds and storms.

As water moves, it changes the land in a process called erosion. It has taken the Colorado River approximately 6 million years to create the Grand Canyon. The southern half of the great state of Louisiana exists thanks to the work of the Mississippi River. For 7,000 years, the Muddy Mississippi has carried sediment from 31 states and 2 provinces and deposited them creating new land. And the Great Lakes? Well, they have the Laurentide Glacier to thank. 18,000 years ago,  the 2.5-mile-thick glacier scraped its way across the land flattening mountains and carving valleys. When the climate warmed and the glacier retreated and melted, water filled in the giant depressions.

While these iconic examples illustrate the power water has to shape the landscape over long periods of time on landscape levels, water is busy moving and shaking things up everywhere it goes, even in your backyard. Scientists have calculated the terminal velocity of a single rain drop to be between 16-25 miles per hour and can splash soil particles, moving them up to three feet away. That’s just one drop.

Water erosion comes through four main vehicles―ice (glacial movement) and rivers we talked about. Then there are coastal waters, waves crashing upon the shores of a continent breaking down big rocks into smaller rocks. Finally, there is rain. Rainfall produces four types of soil erosion: splash erosion, sheet erosion, rill erosion, and gully erosion. Sherwood’s campus is actively being shaped by the erosive forces of water rushing down Sherwood hill carving out a large gully behind the church.

Water gives and water takes. Let us not forget that the Bible contains both the story of the flood and baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan. Water was given to the Israelites when thirsting in the desert and drowned the Egyptians in hot pursuit. Jesus washed the disciples’ feet in water and when his side was pierced blood and water came out―a source of life for God’s new creation.
It is no accident that the water shaping Sherwood’s land is also shaping Sherwood’s congregation―pushing us to learn more about God’s creation and how to respect and protect it.

Part 5–Watersheds

If tool sheds hold tools, storage sheds hold stuff, woodsheds hold wood, garden sheds hold gardening supplies, and she sheds hold shes, what does a watershed hold?

This is a trick question because the word shed can be used as a verb as well as a noun. As a noun, a shed is a small building constructed to hold things. As a verb, it is the action of getting rid of something; think about a snake shedding its skin or dawn shedding darkness. The concept of watershed employs the verb not the noun. Therefore, a watershed is an area of land that sheds water to a common body of water. It’s rather confusing that unlike other sheds that hold onto things, a watershed gets rid of its namesake, water.

Subject to the forces of wind and rain ice and drought waves earthquakes, volcanoes, and tectonic plates moving into and away from each other, the earth’s surface is neither smooth or of the same height. It is a perfect hodgepodge of ups and downs, ins and and outs, softs and hards all working in harmony by design as an Eden for all of God’s creation.

Watersheds are part of that ecological design. Each body of water from the largest ocean to the tiniest of streams or ponds has a watershed, an area of land that drains to it. That is its watershed or may also be referred to as a drainage basin. As you would expect, the larger the body of water, the larger the area of land that drains to it. The bigger watersheds include watersheds of smaller and smaller size. Think about nesting sets of bowls.

I was born in the great Mississippi River Watershed, which at 1,245,000 square miles in size, makes it the fourth largest in the world. All or part of the water shed from 31 states drains into the Mississippi River. Now I live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, which on the scale of watersheds, isn’t too shabby. More than 150 major rivers and streams flow into the Bay’s 64,299-square-mile (166,534 km²) drainage basin, which covers parts of six states (New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) and all of Washington, D.C.

Perhaps when driving on a road trip, you have encountered a sign saying Entering or Leaving the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. If you parked your car at the sign, got out to take a picture, and it started to rain, the water that welled in front of the sign would eventually make its way to the Chesapeake Bay (through that convoluted water cycle we learned about). Water that fell on the other side of the line would eventually drain to another body of water in a different watershed.

Each large watershed is made up of and connected to smaller and smaller watersheds. Unlike Vegas, what happens in one part of the watershed affects the entire watershed. Here are some watershed maps to help you visualize the delineation of our landscape in terms of the movement of water rather than geopolitical.

Want to learn more about your personal watershed? The EPA has a great website where you plug in your address and your watershed map appears. Give it a try and also plug in the address for Sherwood Church (5 Sherwood Rd, Cockeysville, MD 21030).

Next time people ask where you live–give them your watershed address. And remember:

Psalm 95:3–5 — King James Version (KJV 1900)
3 For the Lord is a great God, And a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the deep places of the earth:
The strength of the hills is his also.
5 The sea is his, and he made it:
And his hands formed the dry land.

Part 6–Watershed Health

Since a watershed cannot turn its head and cough, scientists test the water in streams, lakes, or bays to determine overall watershed health. Maybe you have heard, or have even said, you are going to wait until it looks like rain to fertilize your grass so it soaks in. Unfortunately, instead of soaking in, that fertilizer is carried away into streams where it impacts water quality by supercharging the growth and reproduction of naturally occurring algae in the water. When the balance is disrupted, the system is overwhelmed and breaks.

Water, we know doesn’t like to sit still. Water also is very friendly, picking up passengers wherever it flows. These passengers may be some pieces of soil, a leaf, a twig, a car or even a house–as we have seen with the recent flooding in the northeast due to heavy rains associated with Hurricane Ida. Water also picks up trash, oil, fertilizer, dog poop, and anything else that happens to be on the ground in its path.

TURBIDITY AND TOXICITY
Turbidity is the fancy way of describing water clarity. If given the choice, I would rather swim in and drink clear water. Turns out, I am not much different than many aquatic species. That’s not to say there are some who actually prefer cloudy or turbid water. In nature, every available niche is exploited. But that is story for another time.

TEMPERATURE
There are several main water quality indicators that are measured and assessed to determine watershed health including water temperature, water clarity or turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH, as well as levels of nutrients (phosphorous and nitrogen) and toxins. Our watersheds have been beaten and robbed. The choice is ours. We can avert our eyes, shake our heads and cross on the other side of the road, or we can lend a hand, spend some time and invest some resources to facilitate healing. Each year, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation reports on the health of the Chesapeake Bay–which indicates the health of the watershed. For 2020, the score was a D+. Read more here.

Part 7–Watershed Health Continued

If environmental scientists wrote the Declaration of Independence, it may have read, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all watersheds are created healthy, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are geological (land), hydrological (water), and biological (life) integrity relative to natural potential conditions.

What this means is that all watersheds are “born” healthy, meaning they are able to function at their fullest potential in all three categories, land, water, and life. However, just as we humans may all be born equal, there are external factors that impact the one’s ability to realize this inherent potential, so too can external forces influence the functionality of watersheds and thereby diminish or increase its overall health.

They input disorder into the system. Simply stated, they upset the applecart. Can you think of some examples? Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquake, tsunami, fire. All of these “disasters” have been impacting our watersheds since the very beginning, well before we entered the garden. But they weren’t really disasters because the most important characteristic of a healthy watershed is a high resiliency capacity.

Order needs disorder. Disorder in a system stresses it, forces it to innovate and change while trying to maintain its functionality. Disorder builds a better order.

Bad things happen to good watersheds. Good watersheds have the resiliency capacity to absorb the blows, recover to a better position, and continue to function efficiently and effectively. Conversely, unhealthy watersheds have a very low resiliency capacity. When an external force appears, it is not strong enough to withstand the changes and may suffer irreparable damage. Even the healthiest of watersheds can, over time, be degraded, its resiliency capacity drained.

People are a lot like watersheds, born equal yet exposed to different external forces that improve or degrade our functionality and resiliency capacity. For some a passing shower is an inconvenience, to others, already trying to keep their heads above water, it could be a matter of life or death.

People are also one of the external forces, perhaps the biggest of all, acting on the health and well-being of watersheds–and by extension other people.

Part 8–Impervious Surfaces

Last week we started to look at watershed health by looking at water quality. Now we are going to walk upstream a bit and find out the cause of the sickness. One of the number-one predictors of our own health is diet and exercise. For watersheds, it is impervious surfaces.

Impervious means not allowing entrance or passage: impenetrable. Superman is impervious to bullets, as concrete is impervious to water. In fact, all the building blocks of the human habitat are impervious surfaces. As populations have increased and modernized, so too has the percentage of land covered by impervious surfaces.

Imagine a forested landscape. Rain falls, its velocity is lowered as it comes in contact with the trees. Water drops onto the land covered in a spongy mat of leaves. It seeps into the ground. If the rainstorm is more severe, the spongey land may get saturated, the excess water flows downhill towards a stream. And if a really, really bad storm occurs, the stream could overflow and flood. However, in a natural scenario, there is a natural flood plain, an extra layer of protection to absorb the excess.

Imagine now that the trees have been removed. The rain falls fast to the ground without any trees or leaves to break the fall. The leafy spongy floor is now grass. Some of the water still seeps into the ground, but more runs off into the nearest stream–picking up any and all pollutants. Since the area around the stream, the floodplain, has been cleared, the stream overtops more frequently and the water floods a larger area.

Now the grass is replaced with concrete. When it rains, no water is absorbed by the ground. The full volume flows into the stream–fast and furious, unbuffered. It is more than the stream can handle. Flooding events happen with even more regularity and are more severe as the waters are impacting the human communities.

To “manage” the new normal, streams are straightened and hardened to handle a greater volume of water with all of the natural habitat stripped clean. Sometimes, the streams or rivers are covered over. As it flows into the city, the Jones Falls goes from a natural feature to a concrete tube flowing underground. Out of sight, out of mind until the volume of water outgrows even the manmade adjustments–compromising pipes, and dams, and levees.

This is not what David was writing about when he said, “my cup runneth over”.

The Impervious Cover Model developed in Maryland finds that streams are healthy when the percentage of impervious cover in a watershed is below 10%; they become adversely impacted between 10 and 25% and are non-supporting or completely depleted with over 25% impervious cover.

With the world’s population continuing to grow, the amount of impervious surface will also grow. This means watersheds will continue to become imperiled, and with them us, too. We can’t all go live in a cave, so what can we do?

As Paul wrote to the Romans, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Part 9–Stormwater = Pollution

For most of human history, rivers and streams were used as ready-made waste disposal systems. Pipes carrying all manner of waste from human excrement to toxic chemicals were dumped into rivers all over the world under the mantra of “dilution is the solution to pollution”. You may remember the Cuyahoga River in Ohio being so polluted that it caught on fire in 1969. Not being able to swim or fish in bodies of water became the norm. It was the price humanity (and our faunal and floral neighbors) had to pay for modernization.

In 1972, the Clean Water Act was signed into law by then President Nixon. The objective of the Act is the restoration and maintenance of the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the country’s water. One of the goals is to achieve water quality that is both “fishable” and “swimmable” by the mid-1980s. While the date has passed, the goal remains and efforts to attain it continue–unfortunately.

The first action undertaken by the government under the new regulations was to turn off the pipes discharging into streams and rivers and lakes. These pipes were referred to as point sources of pollutions because they came from a single point. This was relatively easy to accomplish because points could be identified and staunched.

Today the major source of pollution into our water is from non-point sources. This is basically the stormwater flowing off the surface of watersheds picking up pollutants along the way we have learned about. NOTE: There are also inputs with wastewater treatment plants. These are also point sources. They are old, antiquated, crumbling, and require a lot of money to be revitalized.

Since the source of the pollution is shared by all, it is harder to point a finger at the problem. We are all part of the problem. In 2012, the State Assembly passed the Stormwater Tax to raise funds to help mediate the harmful effects of stormwater. It was based on the percentage of impervious surface. Dubbed “The Rain Tax” by opponents, the bill was reversed when a new administration took power. Don’t worry–not going into politics.

When the woman was about to be stoned for adultery (doesn’t it take two to tango?), Jesus said, “he who is without sin should cast the first stone”. No stone was thrown because all present were sinners. Similarly, we are all polluters–in big and small ways each and every day. The manipulations we have made to the watershed, the energy we use, the products we use, the resources we waste. Our houses are full of chemicals and heavy metals. In nature there is no away. It all goes somewhere. So when they ask, “Who is polluting the Bay?” you can answer, “We are”.

Part 10–The Butterfly Effect