I remember the awe I felt on learning about the Water Cycle in elementary school. There is a finite amount of water on the earth and it changes its form and goes round and round forever.

The sun shines on the ocean, lakes, and rivers and heats up the water causing some to evaporate. Likewise, plants also give off water as they grow. When the air is saturated with water, some of it condenses forming clouds and sometimes falls as rain and snow. If it falls on the ground instead of the ocean, it can run off into a stream and then make its way to the ocean or it can sink into the ground and become groundwater.

And so it goes, continuously cycling from liquid, to gas, and sometimes to solid ice. I remember trying to get my head around that concept. I thought about the water cycle for a long time as a child, and remember asking my teacher, “Does that mean that I could drink the same glass of water as George Washington?” She smiled, hesitated a bit, and replied, “Well, yes, that could be possible.”

What I was learning was that water resources are finite and that the cycle is closed. Then why do some people act as if water supplies are infinite? Have they forgotten fourth grade?

But of course, some people have indeed forgotten. Or don’t wish to remember. The reality is that water is a precious resource that our way of life encourages us to squander.

I remember my normally-frugal mother, a child of the great Depression, washing dishes under a continually-running faucet. I also remember seeing young girls in Ethiopia where I served in the Peace Corps in the 1960s walking, sometimes over a mile, to the community water tap. Today I see neighbors with automatic sprinklers watering lawns even on rainy days.

Why shouldn’t they? No one has asked them to do anything different. Every time most of us have ever turned on a faucet, the water flows. We don’t know where it comes from, pay little attention to where it goes, and assume it will always pour freely.

All that is changing. We are learning that there is a finite amount of water. We are learning that if we take more than we replace from underground aquifers, wells dry up and seawater intrudes. We are learning that how we act can cause creeks to run dry and people to suffer. We are learning that what goes around, comes around. We are learning about the water cycle.

—Debbie Bulger

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