Consuming An Olympic-Size Swimming Pool

In its annual report on water quality, Durham, North Carolina where I live included the EPA’s breakdown of how Americans use water in their households (shown in the image below,) but that represents only 4% of our per capita water footprint.

The strategic approach Durham has taken to water supply since the 1920s sets it apart from other urban communities in the state, an approach found lacking in other areas of local stewardship such as urban forests and maintenance of local roadsides.

I have enjoyed reading an excellent book published this last spring by Mark Tercek, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, managing director and partner, co-written by science writer Jonathan Adams and entitled Nature’s Fortune – How Business And Society Thrive By Investing In Nature.

The thesis of the book is that nature, including resources such as water are a form of capital and infrastructure that must be accounted as a factor of market production.  Noted is that overall in 2004 Americans used over 655,000 gallons of water per person on average, “nearly enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Durham residents use 23,688 gallons of that in their homes (64.9 gallons per day,) about 11% less than the national average and nearly 20% less per capita than in the year 2000. But that isn’t how we consume 96% of the water use for which we are responsible.

The authors of Nature’s Fortune note that:

“…a liter of Coke in a plastic bottle requires a liter of water for the drink itself,

a liter for production and washing,

10 liters to make the bottle and

a whopping 200 liters to grow the sugar

– a total of 212 liters (56 gallons) of water for every liter of Coke.

This is applicable, I’m sure, to other soft drink brands.

Additionally – “Many other products have surprising footprints:  660 gallons for a cotton shirt, about 120 gallons for one pound of wheat and nearly 2,000 gallons for one pound of beef.  A typical American breakfast of two eggs, toast and coffee requires 120 gallons of water…”

In another report, entitled Wasted, scientists document that getting food to our tables swallows 80% of the freshwater consumed in the United States while using 50 percent of land and eating up 10% of the nation’s energy budget and yet 40% goes uneaten, wasted at various points in the supply chain, including our homes.

Through the way we handle food, we waste 25% of all freshwater in the United States.

Soon Mugsy, my English Bulldog and I will set out on our fifth, east-west, cross-country road-trip since I retired 3 1/2 years ago.  On thing that always stands out are the mighty rivers we crisscross including the Mississippi, Missouri, Colorado and Snake and often the Ohio and Columbia.

Iowa is one of those states that always over-delivers, not just because as a native of Idaho, I am partial to “I” states.  Iowa is dotted with streams and lakes but it is bordered on each side by the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, both of which often visit that state with devastating floods.

It also rests at the center of a watershed that drains 41% of the United States.

Like my adopted North Carolina and native Idaho, the state of Iowa is conservative in make up, although where I’ve lived, I’ve always found a spot of “blue” or “purple” where a moderate Independent can thrive and there are one or two of those in Iowa as well.

In November 2010, by a two-thirds majority, voters in Iowa rose up in the midst of the Great Recession to amend the state constitution and approved the Natural Resources and Outdoor Recreation Trust Fund endowed with a portion of a 1% sales tax.

It stands in stark contrast to the zaniness of North Carolina’s legislature which has turned instead to trying to ripping out any conservation it can and in my opinion desecrating an amendment passed here to the state constitution in 1972:

“It shall be the policy of this State to conserve and protect its lands and waters for the benefit of all its citizenry, and to this end it shall be a proper function of the State of North Carolina and its political subdivisions to acquire and preserve park, recreational, and scenic areas, to control and limit the pollution of our air and water, to control excessive noise, and in every other appropriate way to preserve as a part of the common heritage of this State its forests, wetlands, estuaries, beaches, historical sites, openlands, and places of beauty.”

Instead of trying to redeem a reputation for being backward, as North Carolina’s current lawmakers are doing, the new progressive measure in equally conservative Iowa is being used to perpetually guarantee and increase funding for:

• lake restoration (7%),
• trails (ensuring Iowa stays first in the nation in multi-use trail-miles 10%),
• augmentation of grants to enhance and protect natural and cultural resources (13%),
• local conservation partnerships (13%),
• watershed protection (14%),
• soil conservation and water protection (20%) and,
• to ensure funding of its department of natural resources (23%.)

You can already see the difference, including tile and drainage on farmland to capture and slow storm run-off, trees, and most of all in floodplains along the two huge rivers bordering each side of the state.

A study published in 2010 by researchers at Duke University here in Durham, calculated that public investments in wetland restoration along the Mississippi River’s alluvial plain, including a portion Mugs and I will traverse later this summer, pay for themselves in just two years.

These critical lands when left as or restored as wetlands are worth two and a half times what they are when converted to crops such as soybeans or cotton.  The study also found that restoration of wetlands can also be lucrative to landowners.

My Idaho-rancher dad would always mutter at what he felt was an unfair burden to taxpayers nationwide when people would rebuild after floods along these two rivers.  Very conservative for his time, he was hypocritical as many holding that ideology are because he didn’t complain when the same was done to control forest fires in Idaho.

But my dad was right about something.  We must learn to let floodplains be floodplains.

They are nature’s way of controlling flooding and ensuring water quality.  Instead, an analysis conducted for Federal Emergency Management Agency is estimating that by 2100, the number of homes in special flood hazard zones is set to double from 5.5 million today to 11.2 million,

The increased risk is not all coastal.  Check out the maps in the report showing the geographic increase every 20 years.

Proving that not all conservatives are alike, in North Carolina, Republicans controlling all three branches of government talk about the virtues of local control when it comes to shunning federal programs, but then try to lord it over truly local governments by trying their best to over-ride democratically adopted standards in cities, towns and countries.

A few years ago in Durham, where I live, developers, land owners, neighborhoods and citizens met for over a year to devise and adopt a measure to create 150’ buffers along waterways.  State lawmakers are passing a law to force Durham and any other community to reduce its buffers to the state standard of 50’.

They also want to force Durham to run water and sewer to a development that is deliberately trying to intrude where residents believe it will violate floodplain and threaten a water supply.

“I” states like Idaho, Iowa, Indiana and the vast part of Illinois may be as conservative or more conservative than North Carolina but they aren’t being stupid when it comes to water quality.

They can’t afford to be, nor can North Carolina afford the arrogance of the majority of its current lawmakers.  Iowa’s humility when it comes to nature was earned the hard way. We should follow its lead.

Resurrection On Spirit Lake

Tucked into the mountains and forests of the upper Idaho Panhandle is Spirit Lake, about 25 miles from a lake where I rendezvous with family each year.  One of 76 lakes within a 50-mile radius of Spokane, it too was one of my favorites when I helped jump-start the community-destination marketing organization (DMO) there in the 1970s.

A construction detour stopped me from seeing another Spirit Lake on one of my cross-country trips but now I have another reason to there.

That beautiful, glacier-sculpted section of the northern edge of Iowa, another “I” state, is now the home of Indian Motorcycles, which along with Victory Motorcycles is now owned by snowmobile-rooted Polaris Industries.

Spirit Lake, Iowa is roughly midway between Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Clear Lake, Iowa which was made famous by Don McLean’s song American Pie as the place The Day The Music Died in 1959, six months after my tenth birthday.

That’s the night when rock and roll pioneers Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and “The Big Bopper” Richardson were all killed in a light plane crash shortly after take-off in white out conditions when a wing tip caught the ground.

Coincidentally, two other personal favorites have connections to that tragedy.  Country-music legend Waylon Jennings played bass at the time for Holly and the other groups including Dion on the tour.  He gave up his seat on the plane to Richardson who was sick.

They were replaced on stage the following night by Bobby Vee, who as a 15 year-old was put on stage as a replacement at the next stop on the tour in Fargo, North Dakota along with a band of school-boys deemed The Shadows.

The Surf Ballroom where Holly, Valens and the “Bopper” had performed in Clear Lake the night they died held 1,100 for performances.  It was similar to three ballrooms frequented by and triangulating where my friend Harvey Schmitt grew up about an hour east.

Even seven years later, hugely-popular rock and roll bands such as the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Standells performed in ballrooms not much larger than the one in Clear Lake when I traveled from Idaho to northern Utah to see them at the Lagoon Patio Gardens on July 23, 1966.

I first became intrigued with Indian Motorcycles in the early 1980s when I completed the start-up process for another DMO, in Anchorage, Alaska.  There were stories that crates of unassembled P-36 fighter planes had been found in a ravine there after the war.

Even more intriguing, the friend who was the source of that information, Ken Taylor, had been one of the few to get off the ground in a fighter plane to defend against the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

He also told me of a story that a crate of unassembled Indian motorcycles had been discovered in a cave on the Aleutian Islands many years after they had been hidden away during Japanese occupation during the war.

People often assume I take my frequent cross-country road-trips on my Harley-Davidson Cross Bones.  There are several reasons I don’t, the most significant of which is that I would miss the company of Mugsy, my English Bulldog.

It certainly isn’t out of the question, though.  In 1914, “Cannon Ball” Baker went coast to coast on an Indian motorcycle in 11 days to set a record at the time.  I can’t imagine doing more than 300 miles a day even on today’s roads but “Cannon Ball” was half my current age at the time.

Harley-Davidson has 55% of the heavyweight motorcycle market today compared to 5% for Indian and Victory combined.  Harley’s and Indians both date their heritage to 1901 when William S. Harley first drew up plans for a motorcycle, but Indian already had a prototype that same year.

However, neither was first.  That honor belongs to Daimer in 1885 with its gasoline powered Reitwagen, but Indians were already popular in Europe before and during World War I.  The US Army had used Harley’s in pursuit of Poncho Villa and used them extensively in World Wars I and II.

Indian motorcycles gradually became extinct after WWII while Harley became iconic.  British motorcycles were rebadged as Indians for a time.  And the use of motorcycles overall went into decline from the late 1970s through the 1980s.

Harley-Davidson found its way again and the brand took off in the 1990s.  The Indian brand was resurrected in North Carolina in the mid 2000s before being sold to Polaris in 2011.  It is good for Harley to have some “made in America” competition.

Indian has a historic edge when it comes to styling.  But for me, my preference for Harley is in its very distinctive sound.

Geographic Mindfulness

I couldn’t help but pay special attention to states that begin with the letter “I” during the four cross country ventures I’ve taken during my first 30 months of retirement, always accompanied by Mugsy, my English bulldog.

When I first relocated from my native intermountain west to Durham NC, nearly a quarter of a century ago, I was amused that so many native North Carolinians still classified me as a northerner and whenever I responded, “Idaho” to a question about my origins, the reply was invariably, “oh, where they raise the corn.”


Earlier this month as I traced the path my ancestors had taken across southern Iowa 167 years ago, I indeed saw lots of what my friend and Iowa native as well as fellow-North Carolinian, Harvey Schmitt calls “sweetcorn”, as though it were one word, but I was also impressed by the beauty of the topography there where deep, tree-filled creases are carved in glacial till.

Unless you classify geography by crops and vegetation, Iowa isn’t part of the Great Plains, although a small part of that region spills into the very northwest corner from South Dakota.

Iowa is actually in what is classified as the Central Lowland Plains.

A majority of the state of Montana along with major portions of Colorado, Wyoming, both Dakotas, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and nearly all of Nebraska comprise the Great Plains.

During my trip I crossed outbound through the vast Southern Iowa Drift Plain and then back through the very flat Des Moines Lobe stretching down from Minnesota and the shallower-creased Iowan Surface regions of that state on my return.  The northeast corner stretches up toward Madison, Wisconsin in a Paleozoic Plateau.

Overall the drop from the Great Plains into the Central Lowland Plains is one of elevation.

These cross-country ventures, using largely different routes, have left me with a positive impression of the other “I” states and how different they are from my native Idaho.  Even Indiana, where during the outbound leg this month, I garnered only the lasting impression of a forest of ugly roadside billboards in stark contrast to Illinois, but the Hoosier state redeemed itself upon closer inspection on a return route.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed in retirement, besides indulging many passions beyond that of my now-concluded forty year career in community-destination marketing (demand-side economic development) has been the luxury of what psychological researcher Helen Langer termed “mindfulness” in a book published way back when I first moved to Durham in the late 1980s.

But an even better description is found in the title of her new book with updated research entitled Counter Clockwise.  In an NPR interview I listened to as I drove back roads through western Illinois on the second leg of the outward bound route of my most recent trip, Langer gave a great definition of “mindfulness” as follows:

"People often confuse mindfulness with thinking, and thinking has gotten a bad rap itself. Now, when you're being mindful, as I study it, you're simply noticing new things. Even when you're thinking…”

Continually noticing new things and listening to new things as well as  experiencing the incredible geography of this great nation and the companionship of Mugsy and time with my daughter and grandsons are all reasons I enjoy road trips.

When I consider such experiences, in addition to everything I learn through curation of this blog, I realize that I am proving Langer correct when she says they are making me grow younger in retirement.

As Dr. Langer blogged recently, “...activities are not inherently interesting or boring... If we want to find something, or someone for that matter, interesting, all we need to do is notice things about it. The more we mindfully notice, the more engaged we become...”