(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner)

Aldo Leopold, a man considered by many as the father of modern conservation wrote, “Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher ‘standard of living’ is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.” That was around 1949, and I think that if Aldo could fathom what the world has become now, he would consider not only the cost to things natural, wild, and free, but also the welfare of mankind. Aldo’s world was shaped by events closer to his time like the passing of the last passenger pigeon. Once one of the most abundant bird species on earth numbering in the billions, passenger pigeons were reduced to extinction by over-hunting and habitat degradation. No doubt the wholesale forest harvesting that occurred in the MOV and throughout the eastern U.S. contributed mightily to that.

Unlike the Indigenous peoples of this country who respected natural resources and were careful not to use more than needed and act with reciprocity, helping heal the land from which they garnered sustenance; European settlers came to this country and saw a bounty that was theirs to plunder. Forests were cleared, bison were nearly hunted to extinction, the prairies were broken and converted to cropland resulting in the dust bowl era, which also saw severe declines in waterfowl populations. You get the idea.

Today the human impact on the environment is enormous and we seem to have forgotten the hard-earned lessons of our country’s youth. We enacted laws intended to protect us from ourselves, but constantly weakening those laws, or providing loopholes, or just flat out ignoring those laws has become commonplace. Some say that deregulation is in the interest of productivity; but the question I would ask is, considering environmental harm, is producing more plastic bottles, or destroying our fresh water supply, or exposing the least among us to toxic air worth more than the cost of our and our environment’s health.

The human body is made up of 50-70% water. When astrophysicists look into the heavens for presence of life, one of the primary conditions they look for is presence or evidence of water. Even in the dryest of deserts life hangs on waiting for that rare presence to burst forth.

In last week’s Climate Corner, Eric talked about the impact from the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in our area. I would like to dig a little deeper into that morass. Many studies have been showing a trend in freshwater declines and a recent study shows those declines increasing at alarming rates, globally. The primary culprit for this is shown to be global warming, but another major component is aquifer extraction and what’s worse is that we are draining crucial water from our aquifers and filling the oceans with it – contributing to sea level rise. Data centers use a huge amount of water for cooling, some more than a million gallons a day. Many reuse the water by running it through cooling towers, but even with those efforts it is hundreds of thousands to more than a million gallons a day. Hydraulic fracturing uses 1.5 million to more than 16 million gallons. One major difference is that “brine” produced by fracking is lost from the freshwater cycle by injection underground. On the other hand, water that has been used by data centers is often diverted into storm water systems and is overwhelming many municipal water treatment facilities. This wastewater contains some or all of the following: heavy metals, corrosion inhibitors, biocides, glycols, PFAS (forever chemicals), elevated Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and nitrates.

In the state of Ohio, the Ohio EPA is responsible for issuing permits for data center wastewater discharge which has been contentious due to the OEPA’s track record of failure to hold violators accountable. To make things worse OEPA is planning to and received public comments on allowing data centers to discharge water into the state’s lakes and streams. This is occurring already in some states including West Virginia where it is controlled by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection – again with a less than stellar track record for adequate monitoring and violator enforcement.

I think that Aldo Leopold would seriously question the benefit of a better ‘standard of living’ at the cost of so much in many of the things we do today. I recommend “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold, for some quality reflection on this and many of today’s issues.

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Vic Elam, is a father, land manager, outdoor enthusiast, and proud member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action (MOVCA).