How much water do YOU use?

Posted by laura in Uncategorized

We talk a lot about how important water is and how it’s becoming a more precious and valuable commodity, but do you know how well you’re doing at curbing your water use? Check out this handy dandy little water footprint calculator from National Geographic! All you do is answer some questions about various aspects of your lifestyle, and it’ll tell you where your water use is concentrated.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/water-footprint-calculator/

Why do you need a whole questionnaire to figure that out, one might ask. The answer is that water use isn’t just confined to the water that comes out of your home faucet. Sure, the length of your shower, how often you water the plants, and how many dishes you wash all determine your water footprint. But there’s so much more you might not even consider! For example, when was the last time you bought a new laptop, pair of jeans, or even a juicy T-bone steak?? There’s water that goes into the manufacturing and transportation of electronics, clothes, food, and more and that has to be added into your footprint!

After you measure your water footprint, take a moment to consider how you can reduce your own personal water usage. Can you come up with three things you can reduce, reuse, or recycle in your everyday life? With every little change you make, not only will you reduce waste and unnecessary consumption, you’ll reduce your water use too!

The average US citizen uses close to 600 liters of water per day. If you think it’s impossible to reduce your water use at all, consider that in most African nations and many in central and South America, the average person uses less than 50 (or in some cases, even less than 10) liters of water per day!

I’m flying solo… but not really

Posted by Maria in Uncategorized

Day 1: Captain’s Log
Thanks to the wonderful growth of Caribbean SEA over the last couple of years, I am able to live and work in St. Lucia for a year! I’ve been there twice before for summer camps, but this is my first time here by myself.  And yes, part of me is nervous because I am leaving a great (great great great!) network of friends and coworkers behind and I absolutely love the city of Chattanooga, but at the same time, I am so excited! I’m so optimistic about this coming year and I think that there are plenty of opportunities to be had. And as nervous as I am about leaving my amazing Chattanooga support team, I am realizing how great of a support team I have here too! And although I never had too much of a shell to begin with, this is gonna make me break out of it for sure! It’s gonna be a fun year, St. Lucia!

Diving in the DR

Posted by Maria in Dominican Republic, HELP!, slideshow and tagged with

Come see what we’ve done in the DR!

Now now now, just because I haven’t been blogging doesn’t mean that we haven’t been working!

One of the projects that we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks has been in the small town of Juancho in the Dominican Republic.  We have been working closely with E.G.E. Haina, which is an energy generating company in the DR.  For a little bit of history, E.G.E. Haina has built a windpark near Juancho, but since the windpark doesn’t create jobs, they’ve decided to help the community in other ways, which is where we come into the picture.  Mary Beth has taught several health and sanitation classes in the area and has worked with teachers there too.  There are other projects in the works too that include artificial wetlands, protected marine areas and ecotourism.

When I went down there in August with Mary Beth, we were getting certified for Reef Check, which creates a baseline assessment of the status of the reefs.  Let’s be honest though, as much as I would LOVE to keep going back and doing Reef Check, it’s not exactly feasible or ideal for a bunch of us to travel to Jauncho every year to dive, which is what a proper Reef Check site needs.  So, we have 2 of the local fishermen that have been selected from their local cooperative to be SCUBA certified!! These fishermen (whom I know and can personally vouch for – they are two great guys!) will be Reef Check trained and  have other diving related responsibilities too that will ultimately benefit the whole community.

However, as any diver knows, getting certified is not cheap even in the US, which doesn’t have the kinds of import fees that the DR has… we have to raise about $500 to get them through the classes… and believe it or not, I’m not asking you for money (though of course if you want to donate to this cause, it would be GREATLY appreciated), but ideas! How can we raise $500 relatively quickly?

boating in the bay at Juancho

Drinkable Danish Water

Posted by laura in Clean Water, sewage and tagged with , ,

The latest addition to the list of places with E. coli-infested drinking water is a surprise: try Denmark. The city of Copenhagen just gave the okay to drink tap water without boiling it first. The boil order was on for about a week. What a hassle! And in Europe, even! Just goes to show that we can’t take clean water for granted no matter how wealthy our nation. At the same time, the timing couldn’t be more appropriate, as it coincides almost perfectly with World Water Week and the WaterAid conference being held in Stockholm.

Oh, the Luxury of having Potable Tap Water!!

Posted by Maria in Uncategorized

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have made it back into the United States of America!

Due to some difficulties with flying standby and full flights out of Santo Domingo, I am very excited to say this! Not only because I am a very proud American, but also because, as much as I LOVE travelling to St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic (which I need to tell everyone about still…), I also love having safe drinking water at the turn of a faucet.  Anyone who knows me knows that I have this water insecurity thing – I can’t leave the house without one of my water bottles, and I always have a jug of water in my car in case I need to refill it out of reach of a water fountain/sink/hose (I’m not picky about source, I just need water!).   But in some other countries, you really can’t do this. Trust me, I tried and failed. You have to buy bottles/bagged/jugs of water. And ooooooh do I hate bottled water! But what’s more is that some people absolutely cannot afford to buy clean water. Nor do they have the means to keep their water clean (read: septic tanks or sewage lines). But hey, maybe this is why I’ve chosen this line of work… I want everyone to be able to have the same idiosyncrasies as me! And not have to pay the price of their health to do so!!

Staring in the face of a storm…

Posted by Maria in Dominican Republic, Rambling, Reef Check

Marybeth and I are in the Dominican Republic this week! (I know, it’s hard to keep track of where we are!) And you might have heard, we have another special visitor approaching from the southeast… Tropical Storm Emily. I’m not one to let a little bad weather bring me down but since we were supposed to be SCUBA diving the whole week to perform a Reef Check on some of the reefs that noone had really dived on much before, the timing is a little disappointing. The waves yesterday were already tortuous for me and my poor stomach, and our fate today has yet to be decided, but I just keep telling myself that science isn’t always pretty and glamourous, and sometime you have to roll with the punches. And the waves.

Storm or no storm though, all is not lost.  Our work here in the Dominican Republic is just beginning. I have already met some ammmaaaazzzzing people here who all are really excited about the ecotourism possibilities in the area (which not only brings an income in for the locals, but also pulls the economic focus of the area off of unsustainable fishing practices).  I think there are some awesome prospects here! Watch out Punta Cana!

Rainforest Camp!

Posted by Maria in Camp, Rainforest Camp, slideshow, st lucia and tagged with , , , ,

YAY! We survived!! Call me crazy, but I love Rainforest Camp!

 

This was my second time at the camp near the Des Cartier trail in St. Lucia (and Caribbean SEA’s 5th year of camp!) and even though by the end I was sleep deprived, covered in mosquito bites and extremely dirty, I would go back right now! You know, I am not a big fan of teenagers (and this year, camp was for 11-15 year olds) because they never really want to actually DO anything… They lose that enthusiasm that younger kids have. I think that they (think they) would much rather prefer just sitting around the camp talking to the other kids or better yet, eating, but once you get them to participate, it is amazing! For example, on Wednesday night, our favorite entomologist and counselor, Brendan, hooked up a light trap to attract bugs and I’m sure you can imagine the moans and groans we heard when the kids heard that they would have to look for bugs instead of planning their mushing attack plans, but once we gave them their containers and put them in front of that light, they didn’t want to stop! They wanted to know what every bug was and kept asking for bug containers during the rest of the camp so that they could look at the bugs they would find!
Our focus this year was Reforestation – the campsite was actually affected by multiple landslides after the hurricane and so it was a perfect area to plant trees that we gathered from another nearby trail. We also took the kids to snorkel at beautiful Anse Chastanet where we could show what a healthy reef looks like compared to those that have been smothered in sediment that flows from the rivers everytime it rains. And trust me, we had plenty of rain while we were there! The sad thing, although it made for a great teaching tool, the rivers surrounding our camp (and therefore our water, although our source is higher up on the mountain) were running orange because of all the sedimentation… but you know, that’s why we planted trees! and the Forestry Department of Saint Lucia has been preparing for a major islandwide reforestation day!
For even more fun, as part of our 5 year celebration, we got to go ziplining in Dennery! It was so much fun! We had some kids who were reluctant but once you got them on the line – WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I have pictures loaded and on Facebook, and as soon as I get to a steady enough internet signal I can add them on here… (We’ll talk about what MaryBeth and I are doing right now on another post I think!). Until then, ciao mis amigos!