By David Guy
Every year as we reach the holiday season and our final blog of the year, I like to take a few moments to reflect on the past year and think about what is important and essential in our life. Gathering with family and friends for the holidays is a special part of this season. We also appreciate the health and wellness for our families, friends, and community, which we have learned in the past several years we cannot take for granted.
As a part of the water community in California, we take very seriously our responsibility to serve and manage water in a way that fosters health and wellness in our communities and we want to do our part to help people live healthier and more fulfilling lives. This includes the many efforts underway in the Sacramento Valley to advance healthy rivers, landscapes, and communities throughout the region, from ridgetop to river mouth.
We are continually learning that long-term population health is tied to climate resiliency and ecological health, which is why healthy rivers, landscapes and communities are essential for our economic, social, and ecological well-being. It is truly amazing when our rivers, soils, trees, the air, watersheds, and floodplains all coalesce and function well together, with our precious water resources the key to this function and central to our health and wellness. Please step back with us, think about the Sacramento Valley, and join us to further explore the various ingredients that influence and can improve our population health and wellness in the Sacramento Valley.
Safe Water for All Communities. Water is central to the economic and social vitality in our cities and rural communities. All Californians have a right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water under a “human right to water.” For communities that do not have such a water supply, particularly disadvantaged communities, the leaders in the Sacramento Valley are actively seeking solutions to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable water. Our comprehensive approach includes the Drinking Water Solutions Network to expand and ensure access to safe drinking water, while our water quality coalitions and public water agencies work hard to ensure reliable supplies and high-quality water throughout the region.- Nourishment. Health is dependent upon a safe and nutritious food supply. This is true for both people and fish and wildlife. In the Sacramento Valley, we have an amazing landscape that provides nourishment with the right dose of water at the right time. Families have built farms and communities based on the Sacramento Valley’s unique blessing of water, healthy soil, and sun. Today, nearly two million acres of family farms—world renowned ricelands, nuts, fruit, tomatoes, fresh produce, and irrigated pasture—propel the Valley’s economic engine and offer open-space and a pastoral setting cherished by people in an urbanizing society. The Valley’s farmland, interspersed with refuges and other open-spaces, is also unique in the way it provides habitat and critical food (nourishment) for an amazing biodiversity with more than 225 species: salmon, birds, and numerous wildlife along the Pacific Flyway. The Sacramento Valley is one of the most important food-producing regions in our country and its people have a deep connection involving nourishment between the urban and rural areas as reflected in Sacramento’s designation as America’s Farm to Fork Capital. To see how nourishment is being advanced in the Sacramento Valley, see several films showing Floodplains Reconnected and the three-part series Breaking Bread.
- Outdoor Recreation. We all know the value that outdoor recreation provides to both our physical and mental health and well-being, with an increasing literature pointing towards outdoor activities as an antidote to city-life and mental health challenges. Water plays a vital role in nearly all forms of outdoor recreation. This includes the physical and aesthetic virtues of hiking and fishing along rivers, creeks and lakes in our valley, forests, and wilderness. It also includes bird-watching or duck hunting on the national, state, and private refuges and wetlands; as well as skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing in the world-class Sierra Nevada and Cascade; and boating or paddleboarding on the amazing lakes in the region.
Like a human fingerprint, California’s Sacramento Valley is truly unique. On the leading edge of ecological and economical sustainability, it is also an exceptional place to live, work and raise a family. The Sacramento Valley joins together a world-renowned mosaic of natural abundance: productive farmlands, wildlife refuges and managed wetlands, cities and rural communities, and meandering rivers that support and feed fisheries and natural habitats. Through efficient management of the region’s water resources, the Sacramento Valley will continue to provide what is essential to California’s future success and prosperity. Nourishment and sustenance from the fields, habitats for fish and wildlife, recreation, and a special quality of life—the Sacramento Valley is home to all of this, and more.
We know from personal experience the Sacramento Valley is an exceptional place to live, work and raise a family. To improve population health and wellness and productively address today’s population health challenges requires collaboration, good science and working closely with and learning from people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines committed to this ideal.
In the Sacramento Valley, we are working hard to modernize the role that water suppliers and local governments can serve to help people live healthier and more fulfilling lives. As we think through our ideas and actions to contribute to population health and wellness, we welcome robust discourse and we truly value the perspectives, contributions, and experiences of our families, friends, partners, and all Californians with an interest in improvement. We have both a passion and interest to learn and make the Sacramento Valley and our communities a better place and we will continue to listen to, engage with, and learn together. If you have other ideas or thoughts on how we can work together to improve population health, please share them with us at info@norcalwater.org and visit us at www.norcalwater.org.
Wishing you and your families a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!
