By David Guy
Every year as we approach the holiday season and our final blog of the year, we like to reflect on what is important and essential to our lives. Gathering with family and friends for the holidays is a special part of this season we all cherish and celebrate our communities and personal stories. This is also a nice time to focus on the basic ingredients in our lives and how they support health and wellness for our families, friends, and community.
There is no more basic part of our lives than water. As part of the water community, we celebrate and take very seriously the essential nature of water to our daily lives. Water provides us with our most basic needs—drinking water, sanitation, and food—as well as providing an aesthetic we gather around and that provides joy and spiritual nourishment. We appreciate this blessing of water and devote our lives to thinking about how we can work together to vitalize our rivers, landscapes and communities through the special qualities water offers. Vitalizing gives strength and energy to our splendid natural resources, working towards harmony with the amazing people that grace the region, to cultivate a shared vision in the Sacramento Valley for a vibrant way of life.
More specifically, our health and wellness depend upon the basic functions of water, including:
- Drinking Water and Community. We drink water every day and it is central to the economic and social vitality in our cities and rural communities. We are fortunate to have water suppliers throughout California that provide the most reliable and best quality water in the world; yet, there are still places where we need to do more. For communities that do not have such a water supply, including several disadvantaged communities, the leaders in the Sacramento Valley are actively seeking solutions to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable water. Our comprehensive approach includes a Drinking Water Solutions Network to expand and ensure access to safe drinking water, while our water quality coalitions and public water agencies are also working hard to ensure reliable supplies and high-quality water throughout the region. To be sure, all Californians have a right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water and we have a responsibility to ensure high quality water for all our communities and people.
- Nourishment. Water is basic to a safe and nutritious food supply. This is true for both people and fish and wildlife. In the Sacramento Valley, we have a stunning landscape that provides nourishment with the right dose of water at the right time. Families have worked hard to build farms, ranches and our communities based on the Sacramento Valley’s unique combination 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 sought 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 a special biodiversity with more than 225 species: salmon, birds, and numerous wildlife along the Pacific Flyway. The Sacramento Valley is one of the most important and distinct food-producing regions in our country for both people and fish and wildlife. There is a deep connection between the urban and rural areas on nourishment as reflected in Sacramento’s designation as America’s Farm to Fork Capital and Floodplain Forward. Nourishment also serves a communal function in our society as we all gather every day around food. To see how nourishment is being advanced in the Sacramento Valley, we recommend several films—for human nourishment the three-part series Breaking Bread and for fish and wildlife Floodplains Reconnected.
- The Water Aesthetic and Wellness. We all value the outdoors and recreation for the benefits to physical and mental health and well-being, with an increasing literature pointing towards outdoor activities as a vital antidote to city-life and mental health challenges. We also gather with our family and friends to share recreational experiences. In addition to hydration, water plays a larger and central role in nearly all forms of outdoor recreation. Pick your favorite form of recreation with physical and aesthetic virtues: hiking and fishing along rivers, creeks and lakes in our valley, forests, and wilderness; bird-watching or duck hunting on the national, state, and private refuges and wetlands; skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing in the world-class Sierra Nevada and Cascade; and boating or paddleboarding on the vast lakes in the region.
Serving and managing water in a way that fosters health and wellness in our communities is essential for people to live healthier and more fulfilling lives. 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 in harmony, with our precious water resources as the basic ingredient for our health and wellness.
We know from personal experience the Sacramento Valley is an exceptional place to live, work and raise a family. Please step back with us, think about the Sacramento Valley with your families and friends, and join us to further explore the basic ingredients that influence and can improve our health and wellness. We have both a passion and interest to learn and welcome further conversations and ideas and we truly value the perspectives, contributions, and experiences of our families, friends, and partners. Please share your thoughts 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!
