The following was published as a guest opinion column in the Iowa City Press-Citizen on October 12th, 2016. Thank you, Kathy, for being such an amazing water protector!

Dakota Access Pipeline would disrupt the flow of nature

In August, I was arrested in Boone for attempting to stop work on the Dakota Access Pipeline. I am opposed to the pipeline for many reasons: the way it was permitted with little to no oversight or accountability; the use of eminent domain for private gain; the unethical, unlawful and unsafe practices of Dakota Access; the brutal treatment of the sovereign nation of the Standing Rock Sioux. The billions upon billions of dollars we spend subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for a dwindling resource that could be better spent investing in renewable energy technologies.

Photo: Water protectors Hazel Zimmerman (L) and Kathy Cullin Meyer (R) in Boone County, Iowa

But I want to speak about water. I could try to do a whole lecture on water being the earth’s most threatened essential resource. I could go into how important it is to our life on earth that we have a balanced, well-functioning ecosystem because it minimizes the effects of pollution, protects against drought and erosion, and regulates chemical composition of the soil and atmosphere, but I’m not a professor or a scientist and only know the bare minimum on that subject.

I want to fiercely advocate for and protect the rivers. I am horrified at the prospect of Dakota Access running pipe under several rivers. I know the river’s power to scour away earth, and while corrosion is the number one cause of pipeline rupture, a large number of pipelines at water crossings have ruptured or been in danger from river scour. A catastrophic spill is more than possible, it is probable.That is an unacceptable risk to our environment, our drinking water and to the future of our children, grandchildren and all generations to come.

I feel a very personal connection to the water. My whole life, I’ve been shy, an introvert, you might even say socially awkward. But always, I have felt at ease in nature. Be it walking a woodland or prairie path, hiking or sitting on the shore of a lake, nature soothes my soul. For my 54th birthday, I got myself a kayak, and my life has not been the same since. I paddle on all types of waters, but rivers are far and away my favorite.

Photo: Des Moines River at Norton’s Ford Access by Kathy Cullin Meyer

There is something about being in a kayak, so close to the water you can feel the living, moving beauty of it. Sometimes I feel like the river is moving me along, giving me a tour of all the sights and sounds surrounding it. Trees along the banks, the birds trilling from their branches, the breeze ruffling and shushing through the leaves,  the twists and eddies, deer grazing on the banks, the wooded bluffs, the call of a hawk as it soars circling in the sky, the flurry of wings as a blue heron takes flight from a submerged log, dragonflies, like shining gems flitting about. And the rippling, flowing song of the river itself.

I am not a conventionally religious person, but something about being in the river is such a sublimely transformative and spiritual experience. I never come away from time on the river without a sense of regained equilibrium, an inner peace and a feeling of connection with the earth.

I wish every person, including — maybe especially — all those workers for the pipeline would feel this connection, would go to a river, touch it, feel it, really experience and see it. Perhaps they too would have a spiritual awakening and realize how wrong it is to further distress and poison the waters and ravage the earth. Maybe they would realize we are all connected in the same way rivers connect all the waters of the world, to each other, and to the earth. Imagine.

Kathy Meyer is a resident of Iowa City.

Photo: Water protectors along Mississippi River, Iowa by Kathy Cullin Meyer