According to Bill Nye, “One of the big problems facing humans today is that many places are using up their groundwater. By the year 2025, experts predict that two out of every three people on our planet will be living in areas where water is hard to get. Water is going to become so important in the next few decades that countries will probably go to war because of water.”
Indeed, water is a fundamental part of life and an increasingly precious resource. We spend the first nine (or so) months inside a protective pool of amniotic fluid made up almost entirely of water in the early weeks, and the human body is comprised largely of the same. We cannot exist for more than a few days without this essential chemical. Yet, despite just about 70% of Earth’s surface being covered with water, only 2.5% of that is freshwater, out of which an even smaller percentage (1%) is accessible, and a staggeringly small .007% is “available to human consumption.” To make matters worse, not only is water increasingly scarce, but so too is the water we (those of us fortunate enough to have it for the time being) do have becoming contaminated at dangerously high levels, and for different reasons, around the globe.
I’ve always been drawn to water. I’m not sure I had a choice but to be. As a baby, my mom would swim laps in pools and the ocean’s calm between the breakers with me bouncing behind her on an inflatable little boat attached by a rope to her waist.
As I grew older, I enjoyed exploring the small pond that sits below my childhood home. On sunny afternoons, I would wade out into streams and dip my fingers into the water and grab up handfuls of the gritty white sand below. Sometimes, I would catch tadpoles and plunk them into buckets that I would haul up the hill to our yard, where I would create a habitat out of lily pads and rocks in an old horse trough and watch as they sprouted tails and legs and turned into tiny frogs.
Occasionally, we would travel in the old family van, with its skylight (installed by my uncle Bob, who thought skylights could go just about anywhere and which always inevitably leaked) and curious L-shaped seating, to my aunt’s property on “Snake Mountain,” where we spent glorious days among trees and wildflowers, my brother and me running naked and squealing as we splashed through cold mountain streams.
I swam Pepper, my aunt’s white Percheron, in the pond next to her cabin and giggled as he would bob around in the water, often leaving a trail of floating brown balls behind in case we forgot the way back to shore.
The better part of every summer was spent with aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends at Kerr Lake, where some of my fondest childhood memories were made to the rhythmic heartbeat of waves that still hold our little secrets. Secrets shared while playing cards (and sometimes bloody knuckles) by flashlight as we camped out in a thunder storm, skinny dipping under a full moon, pontoon boating to distant islands, and midnight games of truth or dare sitting out at “the point.”
Water was a remarkably central part of my life.
When we returned from college in summers and later while pregnant with our first child, my (now) husband and I would visit Kerr Lake and envision the joys we would someday share with our own children there.
Unfortunately, that was never to be, and my relationship to and understanding of water, and environments more generally, was gradually made more complicated after a series of events that took place in North Carolina and began a year after we had our first child.
On February 2, 2014, Duke Energy’s Eden, N.C. facility reportedly experienced a broken line, causing a release of over 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River and thus into Kerr Lake. According to the New York Times, no one knows how long the leak had occurred before the report was made, and it was “the third largest coal ash spill in American history.” The Virginia Department of Health issued the following advisory: “If you come in contact with what appears to be [coal] ash, wash off with soap and water. Do not kick the ash up and/or do not try to remove it yourself,” with swimmers encouraged in various warnings to wear protective goggles. In response to the question, “Is it safe to eat fish from Kerr Reservoir,” the Virginia Department of Health wrote, “DH has an existing fish consumption advisory for the Kerr Reservoir[,] and it includes the Dan River and parts of the Hyco and Banister rivers. Certain species of fish in these waters contain elevated levels of methylmercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Results of the analysis of fish tissue samples collected from the Dan River after the coal ash release do not warrant additional fish consumption advisories.”
Despite this reality, little was done to comprehensively clean up the Dan River and affected areas. And, as Derb Carter aptly points out, there are “13 other coal ash sites across North Carolina — all of which are slowly leaking pollutants into our rivers, groundwater and drinking water. The site on the Dan River is the smallest one in the state; if the coal ash ponds near Asheville or Charlotte or another community were to fail, it would make the Dan River spill look like a mere prelude to a truly national disaster.”
I began to think more deeply about the Department of Health’s warnings/statements and what that meant for the future (and my past). How could I take my one-year-old to swim in water that had knowingly, and so recently, been compromised, and at such a scale? What is more, as the second statement suggests, yet unbeknownst to me, the water had clearly long been contaminated (elevated levels of methylmercury and PCBs in the fish) even before the spill, as were so many other area water sources, which begged the question . . . what bodies of water are truly safe, if any, when we think about the multitude of polluting factors: industrial and agricultural run-off, gasoline and oil from boats, silent and known chemical spills, and even human waste?
What are we to believe when our regulators and politicians assure us that we are safe by ignoring issues and by slowly raising legal limits when science and history tell us that we are not? How are we protected when our state leaders (here I am referring to past governor Pat McCrory but am also nodding to a long line before him) take away, refuse to enforce, or deny offers that would help create regulations that would protect our environments and our water? McCrory, a Duke Energy employee of around 28 years prior to taking office, received $98,000 from Duke Energy during his 2012 election campaign, which is “three times more than the company gave to five other sitting governors combined.” Unsurprisingly, as Susan Ladd goes on to tell us, during his time as governor McCrory put his name to a bill that ushered in fracking to North Carolina and also rejected EPA funding of $600,000 that could have been used to test water near proposed fracking sites. Needless to say, he gutted North Carolina of vital environmental protections, and his legacy is toxic.
With these law-makers and leaders, our water was not being protected.
Yet, because Kerr Lake has been central to our lives as a family, despite this dire news, my relatives continued on with celebrations, camp-outs, and reunions at the lake as they always had and insisted that the water was safe. And, while I wished to join them and share with my husband and children the same kinds of happy moments with nuclear and extended family I enjoyed as a kid, I felt compelled on each occasion to say “no.”
I knew that for me, and for my similarly-minded husband, the short-lived fun would not be worth the inevitable exposure to my family and what that could mean in the longer term.
One polite refusal has, over the years, become many, and with time I have become the subject of “good-natured” mockery as folks learned that we not only have abstained from swimming at Kerr lake because of environmental concerns but at Wrightsville beach and our area YMCA as well after learning of high levels of contaminants found in both water sources. In 2017, news came out of the presence of a carcinogen, GenX, in the Cape Fear River and drinking water of area residents that has likely been present in area waterways since DuPont’s (now Chemour) founding in 1971, and later in 2019, Vance County’s water supply, the water that fills the Henderson YMCA community pool where I swam competitively for much of my childhood, made headlines after testing at 420x the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Health Guideline.
I began to see that water sources all around were compromised, from the better-known travesties that were to come in far away (from me) places like Flint, Michigan and on military bases all around the country to small-town wells and municipal water supplies in places like Pittsboro, N.C., now known for having some of the worst water quality in the country, thanks, in large part, to a throwing out of and deplorable lack of regulations.
I made connections and realized that even our neighborhood pools are, perhaps especially, contaminated by the water pumped into them (and the methods used to pump the water in) and the pesticides (herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides) commonly used around them.
Water, for my husband and me, gradually became something to be avoided.
“You used to be so fearless, Kyra. What happened to you?” someone says with a headshake. “When are you going to stop worrying and live a little?” another probes. “You think too much,” someone states matter-of-factly. “You don’t want to raise your kids in a bubble. You have to let them experience life!” and “This one little time won’t make a difference.”
Indeed, as I think back upon my childhood self, I was relatively carefree. I had the luxury of enjoying simple moments without fears of health consequences and not-so-gentle reminders that I “should know better” because I was raised in the woods, with no houses or industries in sight, surrounded by beauty and serenity. I was allowed to explore my surroundings freely.
And yet, while in many ways I was lighthearted, I was also troubled. At a young age, I developed an intense fear of tornadoes, and during the summer months, when the television or radio would long-beep and issue tornado watches or warnings for our area, I was petrified and would take refuge, my pets in tow, in our basement, waiting out hours alone stationed on a lawn chair and writing stories with my finger in the dirt floor. I was terrified of the dark or that a fire would engulf us in our sleep, and I wrote plans and drew escape routes in the event of a fire that I shared with my family. My mind was often preoccupied with thoughts that my parents might die unexpectedly.
I grew up hearing about how PCBs could make people sick and felt frightened when I overheard things like “elevated cancer risks” at meetings and during phone calls and read about our county in newspapers, but, as paradoxical as this may seem, my parents wanted us to have a childhood free from worry. My dad always said that there would be enough things to fret about and be responsible for when we were older and believed “kids should be kids.” So, the reality of chemical migrations and what that might look like for us personally was something we did not, as a family, discuss or really even think about in the day-to-day. We all just kept moving and looking outward.
Looking back, however, I see that despite the warnings not being directed at me and my parents’ commitment to offering me a happy childhood, I was internalizing the conversations about health and environments all around me and was struggling in my own way with mental health.
It wasn’t until I was much older, however, that I commenced thinking about how close our then unfiltered well water was to the nearby landfill and noticed the unsightly, red and green algae that now develops on our pond during peak growing season.
After our neighbors logged 40+ acres of land that adjoins my parents’ property, trees that had been there my entire life, my husband and I decided to venture out with our two children through the cleared field to explore. After some time, we noticed a tiny stream trickling steadily through the brush and remaining fallen trees, left behind likely because they were not “worth enough.” Our son was delighted by the stream and ran along studying it, but before too long we noticed puddles of oil resting and algae growing on the more stagnant areas. The stream was coming from neighboring farm land where they grow tobacco and soybeans and other particularly “dirty” crops, and it feeds directly into our pond via this tiny stream, we found. After all those years of exploring the land, I realized that I had never really known how connected we were to our neighbors—how connected we all are.
I later asked my dad why he and Mom remained at the Cabin after the landfill was created and why we returned from Florida, where they moved briefly for work (my mom had begun a carriage business with her sister-in-law, Laura Bennie, and my dad worked for Walden University, which had just gotten its accreditation and was destined to be something big). He responded simply: “We didn’t want to raise you kids in Naples. You were probably too little to remember, but the planes used to fly over our house spraying blankets of Malathion. Everything in their wake would be wet. It drove me crazy. All I could think about was what if you kids were outside playing when they fly over? The Cabin was our refuge.”
In that moment, I understood that my father and I were much more alike—our histories, fears, parental hopes and limitations—than I had before realized. Dad always asks, “what do we know, how do we know what we know, and what are the limitations of what we know?” I constantly ask the same. In the end, we can only do the best we can with the knowledge and resources we have at the time.
And, as crazy as it may sound, surrounded by agricultural crops and encroached upon by a landfill, I am happy my parents did not give up on a life in Warren County because, as I have learned through life and research, there will always be something to contend with in this incredibly toxic world we have created.
The land remains a sacred place to us. As my dad says, it offers a feeling that one (who loves nature and is not afraid of being absolutely surrounded by trees and flowers and wildlife, including packs of coyotes, ticks, cottonmouths, and so many other animals) can only understand from being there.
Yet, I now know that, as one must elsewhere, we have to enjoy the natural wonders while also considering exposure risks. So, while we do sometimes venture out on a small paddle boat to enjoy the sights and sounds of nature that can be found in that magical place, our children do not get to wade in the pond’s streams and hunt for tadpoles as I did, and they know we must bathe our Labrador after she bounds into the water. They do not ask to splash in sidewalk puddles even though characters in children’s books make it sound so tantalizing to do so, and even though we all silently know they would love to.
I often wish that I could know a little less and therefore allow my children to be free to experience a little more. I watch on as other people’s kids walk barefoot and splash playfully through local rivers or play ball on newly chemically-treated grass as their parents apply Roundup around their flowerbeds. They seem so blissful.
When it comes to developing bodies, is there such a thing as being “too careful?” If so, where does one draw the line? What moments are permissible “exceptions” to a rule, and what exposures should be overlooked for laughter and good fun . . . and mental health? These are questions my husband and I often ask ourselves.
From the moment they are conceived, embryos, fetuses, babies, and later children are tiny bundles of potential. The growth and development they manage within such a short period is astounding, yet with all that possibility comes incredible vulnerability, vulnerability that should not be overlooked and forgotten once the fontanel closes or a child can steady their neck or walk on their own or even drive a car.
A multitude of studies show links between chemical exposures and a myriad of health effects for children and adults, ranging from endocrine disorders and kidney disease to birth defects, miscarriage, asthma, and various forms of cancer. I won’t take the time to even try to offer a literature review because the sheer amount of research on this broad topic is overwhelming, and others better qualified have already done a much better job on that front than I would. But, the facts are there. All one has to do is look for them.
Having said this, I continue to wonder how we are to keep children’s bodies safe from toxins in our water and all around without allowing the knowledge of the dangers that abound, and the inevitable restrictions that ensue, to affect their already vulnerable mental health? While our global pandemic has worsened mental health among various populations and particularly adolescents, according to the CDC, “In the 10 years leading up to the pandemic, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness—as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors—[had already] increased by about 40% among young people.” Some of the reasons listed for this startling increase are “growing concerns about social media, mass violence, natural disasters, climate change, and political polarization.” No doubt there are others. So . . . how do we share with children, already multiply burdened with the realities they face, how toxic our environments have become without taking away all of the joie de vie? How do we lessen their allostatic loads? Emily Dickinson once said, “the mere sense of living is joy enough,” or at least it should be. Of course, she lived in quite a different time.
As we work to preserve health, in its broadest sense, for children, we must continue the never-ending struggle of bettering their environments, which are toxic in various ways (e.g. flame retardants, pesticides, emissions) and by differing amounts often relating to geographic location, social class, race, and ethnicity. In order to do this, we have to act proactively to change the regulations and not only reactively, which we so often have to do and as Governor Cooper is thankfully doing in McCrory’s wake, leaving residents vulnerable and confused. Reacting to a spill, leak, chemical application, etc. that has already occurred, while absolutely necessary, is just not good enough. As the Biden-Harris administration is working to do with its new bill to limit nationally PFAS pollution, we have to continue to create and enforce regulations that, along with ensuring proper monitoring, prevent and are based on the precautionary principle because we cannot clean up fast enough, and some things can never be fully detoxified. Exposures can never be undone.
I write these words when my children are asleep, reading, or playing—distracted—and when they curiously ask me to share with them what I am working on, I smile and offer an incomplete response and change the subject. I do this to protect them, in a small way, from the knowledge of what I am trying to protect them from. I hope someday, when they are older, they may read this and understand their childhoods better; that they may see that life is complicated and that while we tried to arm them with knowledge, perhaps too much knowledge, we also felt deeply compelled to shield them in some ways from coming to it too fast. And, we have made mistakes along the way.
No doubt, if we are self-reflective and acknowledge how little we actually know, we will all continue to experience confusion, fear, sadness, and, inevitably . . . regret. Yet, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, “We must accept finite disappointment, but [we must] never lose infinite hope.” Hope keeps alive the idea that something that is bad may be made better.
And, what are children if not the very embodiment of hope?
By Kyra Christina Ferruccio Ramírez
