Clermont State Historic Site

By Rex McVitty

July 14, 1965

It is a strange paradox that one does not begin to miss any particular thing until suddenly, it is in short supply.

Take water for instance, stuff that came down in bucketsful when you were planning a picnic or some other form of outdoor activity. Water that you could use for plants or for swimming in, boating on or fishing in. Why it was everywhere except maybe the Western deserts.

All of a sudden, water has become scarce up and down the eastern seaboard from Florida to New England. The New York newspapers are daily telling the ever-lowering contents of the great reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains which supply the city with water.

New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are engaged in a legal squabble about how the watershed of the Delaware River should or should not be used. You see, while the Catskill Mountains are in New York the western slopes form a watershed for the Delaware River. New York City has its own river, the majestic Hudson flowing from the Adirondack Mountains down the valley of the Hudson and into New York Harbor.

There is considerable agitation among the authorities who note with dismay the fast dwindling supply in the reservoirs to build a pumping station above the highlands of the Hudson and pump water from where the river is fresh or slightly brackish.

But there is a snag, as a considerable number of cities and river towns have been pouring their raw sewage right into the river. Although nature has cleansing agents in the shape of bacteria, which will, if given enough scope, clean up the water from sewage. But, in the case of the Hudson and other eastern rivers, there is just a bit too much pollution.

An average American home uses 50 gallons of water every day. You simply turn on a faucet and are supplied with all the water you need for drinking, bathing, cooking or watering the lawn. We have taken this for granted, never thinking of the difficulty we might encounter supplying our own water. It would require at least an hour’s hard work each day to pump and carry the needed amount. More important still, we would not be sure of its purity.

Beside the private needs in the average community, there are public needs, water for fire fighting, street sprinkling swimming pools, fountains, as well as the amount needed for washing, cooling, processing air conditioning by industry. Why, the National Space people at Cape Kennedy use as much water for cooling and other purposes as a large metropolis.

Taking Florida as a whole, there is not as much water now as there was as there was 100 years ago and there are more than 5 million people now to use the water. Since the time when I first came to Florida, there has been a terrific lowering of the water level. Why, in those days Florida was one large swamp. If you wanted water, you could drive a pipe down a few feet or so and water would come out in a gusher.

Draining the land for big cattle ranches and fruit and truck growing has lowered the water level considerably but in Florida it is pretty much the same problem that all the eastern states face, steadily increasing population and steadily diminishing supplies of pure water due to pollution. This is a great pity and a growing problem because water is one of our most important assets.

In modern times, because of this pollution from many sources most of the water we drink has been treated chemically. This is most important because water could be carrier of killers which could cause immeasurable disasters.

It is a strange and dire thing that, even now, a drink of cold spring water gushing out from behind a rock, water that has taste and quality may be just a memory to the majority of our citizens.

Here in the Hudson Valley, we are in our fourth year of drought and things are getting critical. All the farmers have been digging ponds (you never saw so many small ponds in your entire life) so that they might catch and hold the rain for irrigation.

We are getting rain, thank goodness, just about enough to keep the woods from getting too dry but the real damage here has been done during the winter months when the average snowfall has provided water for the spring and summer needs. Past winters have provided little or no snow and there has not been enough rainfall to take up the slack. Now our county has been declared a disaster are by the governor.

Well, it doesn’t really look too bad in the woods but the fruit growers are in trouble. There aways is the sea and I understand that scientists are busy at work studying methods of obtaining fresh water from the sea at a cost which would make it practical.

They tell us that all life originally emerged from the sea. It looks, as if rapidly multiplying life on earth will have to go back to the sea in future for a lot of its substance.