![\"Ballou's](\"https:\/\/raicesculturalcenter.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/IMG_1048.jpg\")
<\/a>Almost a year and a half ago, I discovered a little jewel of information that completely changed my life.\u00a0 About to go on a camping trip in Jenny Jump State Forest in the northwestern mountains of New Jersey, a colleague mentioned that I should stop by “Ballou’s” spring house for some clean, refreshing mountain spring water, piped out of the mountain at the side of the road.\u00a0 He told me how to find it, and to make sure to take extra bottles with me, as just taking a taste couldn’t possibly be enough.\u00a0 I brought a few gallon jugs and filled them up, making it my main source of drinking water for the next couple of days.<\/p>\nI was happy to not be sick, but still, something didn’t sit right with me about having to get in my fossil fuel burning car and spend a full morning or afternoon to pick up water, a resource I should be able to access or source locally.\u00a0 I would encourage anyone who doesn’t have their own clean water well to find a local spring, if there are any nearby that are tested and uncontaminated.\u00a0 I wanted to find something closer to home, but it seemed that anywhere I looked for clean water close to home left me with a dead end, or a “drink at your own risk” sign.<\/p>\n As I searched for clean water, I learned the extent of contamination in my region, in so many parts of my state…it made it hard to comprehend why we can’t get our acts together enough to protect the most basic sources of life for ourselves and our community.\u00a0 I learned that my town’s (and most of my county’s) drinking water came primarily from surface water of the Delaware and Raritan Canal.\u00a0 I learned about the American Cyanamid Superfund site only a few miles upstream that was leaching benzene, arsenic, and other contaminants into the Raritan River <\/a>on a daily basis and mingling waters with the river during floods<\/a>.\u00a0 I learned about the 3+ years of falsified water quality reports<\/a> filed by the city of New Brunswick, just across the river, where I used to live and drink water (these false reports were covering up water quality violations at the same intake point as my current town gets the majority of their water from).\u00a0 I learned to read water quality reports for which contaminants were missing from the tests and reports, I learned that although the cleanup of that Superfund site <\/a>seems to be underway<\/a>, there isn’t too much information available on current contaminant levels.\u00a0 I also learned that not too As I write this post, about a half a mile from where I sit, there is a ruptured gas main under the surface of the Raritan River.\u00a0 It’s no longer spewing natural gas into the river and the fumes are no longer blanketing my town.\u00a0 The valve has been dug out from under the snow and shut off, and repairs are underway.\u00a0 Our public utility assures us that there are no health or environmental threats associated with this break and the state’s Department of Environmental Protection is staying silent due to the lack of risk associated with a spill like this.\u00a0 But now articles are surfacing from months ago about residents alerting the utility to the leak, people saying that they had seen and reported oddly churning water above the gas line for at least a year prior to today’s eruption, which resulted in two geysers of natural gas and water to rise up out of the river:<\/p>\n<\/a>Two days after I started drinking that water, I woke up in the morning feeling like a completely different person than I had for over two years before that trip.\u00a0 I found myself suddenly cured of a nausea and heavy feeling that had hung over me for years.\u00a0 My doctor hadn’t been able to figure out what it was, and I just had to learn to live with it.\u00a0 But suddenly it was gone.\u00a0 And when the spring water ran out and I started drinking my filtered municipal tap water, suddenly it was back.\u00a0 <\/a>Having lived without that feeling for a couple of days, I couldn’t accept being sick again, so I did what any normal person would do.\u00a0 I took a trip to the home brewers supply shop and bought myself a bunch of 5-gallon glass carboys, drove the 75 miles to the spring and filled them up with my new source of drinking and cooking water.<\/p>\n<\/a>For me and my co-director at Ra\u00edces, it is worth the trip, every 6-8 weeks, to fill up on this precious gift of life, and it is the only way we know how to provide ourselves and our families with clean water.\u00a0 I can’t trust the tap water in my town, I don’t own a home so I can’t dig a well or make a solar still.\u00a0 It’s our own source of clean water, and we have met others at the spring house who come from even further away because they can’t drink their local water either (once we met a family that drives over two hours from their contaminated, fracked land in PA because it’s the closest clean water they can find).<\/p>\n<\/a>many people know about these problems or even think to question where their water comes from.\u00a0 I came up with more questions than I could find answers.\u00a0 I stopped wanting to find clean water locally because it seemed impossible, and just became grateful that I had a source of fresh water that doesn’t make me go through my day feeling ill.<\/p>\n