After serving two terms on the board of directors for my local water association, I chose not to run for re-election. Being responsible for peoples’ drinking water is sobering.

You start to think about where the water comes from and what might be getting in to it. You think of the babies and elders in your neighborhood or those weakened by disease and the potential ramifications tainted water could have on their lives.

You realize you have little knowledge of, and less control over, what people do on the land adjoining your water intake site. It’s a bit overwhelming.

On an Island, water is a natural focal point of community. We meet aboard or about boats in the Sound, at the beach for a dip or at the pond to watch damsel flies.

Doug Dolstad suggests that small water systems are one of the few remaining vestiges of participatory democracy around. Although some systems are privately owned, most of our approximately 150 public water systems are co-owned by the people they serve.

Members of small community water systems gather at annual meetings, occasional potlucks or work parties to help maintain or improve their systems. Unfortunately, interest in these gatherings is declining.

In the past, the communal nature of drinking water on the Island was a great way to foster participatory democracy. It is not so common now, in part, because of our suburban sensibilities. We think of our water systems as “utilities” — owned, operated and managed by some distant entity.

The first week after I became president of my water association, I was out at dusk with a neighbor in mud up to my knees helping fix a leak. The water on one road had been turned off, which is admittedly annoying.

A resident came down to complain, indicating we should work all night to get the water back on, despite the fact we had no lights, would have to excavate near a power line, and were simply volunteers working on a nonprofit system we co-owned with the complainer (along with a few hundred others). He expected a costly surburban level of service and viewed himself as a “customer.”

The largest systems on the Island receive quite a bit of regulatory oversight and helpful technical assistance from the state Department of Health. King County provides oversight for systems serving two to nine households, but has only two staff positions, one of which is currently vacant, to oversee 1,500 systems countywide.

Given the diminishing availability of general tax fund dollars, Larry Fay, manager of Community Environ-mental Health at King County, doesn’t expect the staffing levels to change. Depending on revisions to the state regulations governing small water systems, he thinks the focus of King County’s Drinking Water Program will be to provide more public information and education to water users on systems deemed at risk for contamination.

In the meantime, representatives of our small water systems have told me that they need help in devising strategies to protect their water sources. Many of our spring, surface water, and shallow well collection systems were constructed long before neighboring properties were developed and the water systems didn’t invest in purchasing adjacent lands as buffers or acquiring restrictive covenants around their wells or springs which could have extended on to adjacent parcels. Now we have to backtrack and figure out what’s effective given our current level of development.

I encourage you to go see where your drinking water comes from, how it is collected and distributed. Go to the annual meeting or the water association potluck and meet the folks who drink the same water you do. It’s an opportunity for us to reconnect over a simple but fundamental need.

— Susie Kalhorn is an environmental educator working on Island water resource issues.