"Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."

I have always been a big advocate of tap water—not because I think it harmless but because the idea of purchasing water extracted from some remote watershed and then hauled halfway round the world bothers me. Drinking bottled water relieves people of their concern about ecological threats to the river they live by or to the basins of groundwater they live over. It's the same kind of thinking that leads some to the complacent conclusion that if things on earth get bad enough, well, we'll just blast off to a space station somewhere else.

More than 5,500 large dams impede America's running waters, leaving less than 2 percent of the country's 3.1 million miles of rivers and streams flowing free. In the wake of these river alterations trails a record list of endangered aquatic species. Two of every three freshwater mussel species are heading for extinction, or are already there; half of all crayfish species are imperiled; more than a third of the country's freshwater fish are in trouble -- 17 of them missing outright.

 "Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."

"Water is life's mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water."