Water. Water is the essence of all life.

With out it, humans and all forms of life on earth will not exist.

Water is something men have died for, on, in, and under.

Water or traces of water are the first thing that our astronauts look for when looking for planets and the chance of human life ever being there.

So why do humans continually contaminate their own water, and why specifically do we in Alberta treat water as a throw away commodity as we do with our cars, food, entertainment devices, and lives?

In Alberta like many other jurisdictions we have gotten use to this notion that if we throw it in the rivers or the ground and it goes away, it is no longer our problem. An out of sight it is out of mind out of mentality.

While visiting a conference centre many years ago an elder from a near by First Nations that explained it to me this way. Every one of our seven oceans starts with one small drop from a glacier in the mountains on one of the continent. He went on to say that the reason our oceans are dying, is that the respect for the water far up in the mountains has died as well.

We consider the rivers and waterways our very own flushing system to which we have no connection to as they pass in front of our homes. Or we think we don't.