💧 New Water Activism Masterclass ~ plus a court says you have no right to clean Water, and 4 days to save the Nile
Well friends, I'm writing this from my favorite beachfront cafe, gazing out at a glittering ocean, and so relieved that the sargassum has finally eased up and I can see the beauty of clear Water for the first time in months. Sargasso season gets more intense and lasts longer every year. The seaweed blooms as the ocean digests the pollution poured into her, then washes ashore and wreaks smelly, ugly havoc on this town and its economy for about half the year. And when I look at it, I see the ocean's incredible power to heal herself. I remember that the same sargasso can be collected, processed, and turned into plastic-like products. As Zach reminded us on last week's podcast, so often what looks to us like the Earth's suffering is actually her healing, and we get to choose: either gripe about it or get out of its way and even help it along. Just like a fever is the body healing; suppress it and you silence the message. Cleaning up Water is a relationship, a conversation we're being invited into, and every topic this week is a further invitation to step into that communication. "Climate is not first of all a 'problem to be solved,' but a communication-to-be-heard. And it is especially a communication of Water." ~ Dr. James W. Perkinson I've also been working hard on the next masterclass, coming up September 24, and I'm really excited about this one. Without further ado, let's dive in.
🎓 Guardians of the Source: Enrollment Is OpenWater is being rewritten from a right into an asset. Here's your handbook to turn that ship around. Enrollment opened today for my new masterclass, Guardians of the Source: An Empowering Handbook for Protecting Water From the Blue Gold Rush, available on Thursday, September 24 at 5pm Central, replay included. For every millennium of human history, Water belonged to everyone and no one. She was the commons, the one thing no king could fence. That is being rewritten right now, reclassified from an inalienable right into a private asset that can be metered, priced-hiked, and shut off. A federal court told the people of Jackson as much this week, in writing. WATER is the final frontier of freedom. As Bodies of Water, We Have a Duty To Safeguard WaterYou’re being called to take your place among the guardians of the Source. In these chaotic and wrenching times, those of us who long for a better world are maybe feeling a little parched. Perhaps you, too, are thirsty for living Water. Maybe you suspect, as we do, that we can't see "justice roll down like the waters" unless we ourselves become like artesian wells where living Water springs up, no easy thing amidst so much that drains us dry. This is the Rise of the Water Bearers - ancient duty, sacred rebellion, and the blueprint for a free Earth.This is for everyone who loves Water and has felt the helplessness of these times, and is ready to trade it for empowerment. Step in, and become the kind of person Water can trust: a guardian of the Source, ready to take your place in the Aquarian era as a steward of the Source. Water is not a resource. Water is the Source. And we are the ones she has been waiting for.We are Water, protecting herself. Reserve your place: $22 for the live transmission and 5 day replay, or $55 for lifetime access.
Now, for this week's Water WIN! 🎉⛏️ Mining Claims in the Black Hills Just Dropped 20%Mining companies are leaving the Black Hills. Public pressure is part of why. Between September 2025 and July 2026, active mining claims in the Black Hills fell by a fifth. The Black Hills Clean Water Alliance counts 9,973 active claims covering about 206,042 acres, roughly 17% of the Black Hills National Forest. Still an enormous footprint, and the first time since August 2022 the number has dropped below 10,000. At the November 2023 peak, 24% of the Hills sat under claims. From the Alliance's letter: "Mining companies look for the point of least resistance, and the Black Hills are not it." Markets did some of this. Years of public comment, litigation, and presence made the Hills expensive to fight over. Watch their Public Comment Opportunity notices and act on the next one.
💡 New Video: Heavy Water vs. Light WaterMy newest video is up: This Water Quadrupled Cancer Survival Times in Clinical Trial | Heavy Water vs. Light Water. Four and a half minutes on deuterium, the heavy hydrogen isotope that sits at about 150 parts per million in ordinary Water and interferes with the nanomotors your mitochondria use to make ATP. In Gábor Somlyai's double-blind, placebo-controlled phase II trial in prostate cancer, patients drinking deuterium-depleted Water has a four-fold increase in survival time (systematic review, 2024)
🌍 Four Days to Protect 13 Acres at the Source of the Nile13 acres of wetland at the source of the Nile. Deadline: September 15. An opportunity has surfaced to permanently protect 13 acres of tropical freshwater wetland on Lake Nalubaale (Lake Victoria), the source of the Nile, beside the Uganda Buddhist Centre near Entebbe. Asking price: $1.75 million. The deposit is $875,000, due September 15, and as of this morning the campaign stands at $855,877. Roughly $19,000 to go in four days. If it fails, the parcel goes to resort development or a military base, and the schools, orphanage, and villages that draw food and Water from the wetland absorb the noise, light, and waste that follow. The campaign is run by Teachers and Friends of Bhante Buddharakkhita, since as a monk he does not solicit funds himself. His words about the lake: "When we care for Nalubaale, we care for our own origin. She is the grandmother of all rivers, and of all life." Give any amount on the GoFundMe. Join the online benefit with Bhante and friends, Thursday September 24 at 8pm ET, share the campaign post, and forward this to anyone who could give substantially.
📖 On the Blog: Anxiety May Be a Hydration SignalYour anxiety might be thirst. As little as 1% dehydration changes your mood. Two new blog posts are up. Dehydration & Anxiety walks through how a body running low on cellular Water registers it as an internal emergency: adrenals respond, cortisol climbs, the sympathetic nervous system stays braced, and you go searching for a psychological story to explain a physiological state. Research puts the threshold at 1% dehydration for measurable effects on mood, attention, and memory. Energized Water: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Reclaim It is the companion piece, the full Seven-Step Protocol from Forage to Free. Both point to the SpringAqua Wet 7, still the one system I've found that covers every step at once.
🧠 Is Water the Material Basis of Consciousness?A Moscow State professor with 300 papers is asking whether Water is where mind lives. One of my all-time favorite water scientists, whom you've certainly heard me quote if you've taken some of my courses, Professor Vladimir Voeikov, Vice-Chairman of Bioorganic Chemistry at Lomonosov Moscow State University and author of more than 300 publications, presents for the World Water Community on Thursday, September 17, 12pm to 1:30pm ET: an hour on decades of work on Water's role in bioenergetics and respiration, then open questions. Register free here; the Zoom link comes by email. PLUS: Three upcoming premieres on my channel: What Is Watershed Democracy? The Hydropunk Plan to Revive Wetlands and Prevent Water Scarcity on September 14 at 10am Chi Balls for Water: What They Are, How They Work, and What the Studies Say on September 21 at 10am MJ Pangman on reviving comatose tap and bottled Water on September 28 at 10am. Last week's This Week in Water, on the girls who won a river its rights, is up now. (Yes, I've been a busy girl, and I'm just getting started!)
⚖️ A Federal Court Just Ruled There Is No Constitutional Right to Clean Drinking WaterYour right to Water that won't poison you? A federal court says it isn't in the constitution. On September 4, 2026, the full US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, ruled that the Constitution provides no right to clean drinking Water, and no right to accurate information from public officials. The decision affirms the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by residents of Jackson, Mississippi over lead-contaminated drinking Water. (Mississippi Today, WLBT, Bloomberg Law) Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote that "the right to not be harmed by lead-contaminated water" does not fit within the right to bodily integrity: "The Constitution does not provide redress for every governmental wrongdoing." A divided panel had revived the residents' claim in 2025; the full court vacated it. These residents won, and then had the win taken back. The court's advice was to file tort claims, petition your representatives, elect better officials. Two weeks ago I wrote to you guys that rights which are not protected are seized. A federal appeals court has now put it in writing, in a majority-melanated city with one of the most documented Water crises in the country.
🛡️ 30 Days to Defend 79% of America's RiversEPA wants to strip protection from 79% of US rivers. You have until October 9. On September 9 the EPA and Army Corps published a supplemental proposed rule redefining "Waters of the United States." It would limit Clean Water Act protection to perennial waters, those flowing every day of the year, and to wetlands with a continuous surface connection to them. Waterkeeper Alliance estimates that leaves at least 95% of individual wetlands and 79% of rivers and streams in the continental US without federal protection. The comment window is 30 days. Leave your comment before October 9. An organization I support wrote to me this week with their year in review, and it shows what defending a right looks like when the Constitution won't. Waterkeeper Alliance unites more than 300 clean Water groups worldwide. This year they ran the International Plastic Pellet Count: 1,000 volunteers, nearly 1.1 million pellets, more than 700,000 of them recovered in ten minutes near Dow's Seadrift facility in Texas (petition Dow). In court they halted the East Grand Lake Project in the Atchafalaya Basin and won New Yorkers the right to know when raw sewage enters their waterways. They are winning beautiful water victories, and deserve our hands, our dollars, and our heartfelt cheers... Support them here.
🏔️ They Defunded the Warning SystemA glacier collapsed in Nepal. The early-warning program that should have caught it had been cut by the Trump administration's smash-and-grab gutting of foundational public agencies. The USAID/NASA program in Nepal that monitored glacial lakes and provided early flood warnings was cut earlier this year by DOGE. Now a glacier collapsed, killing over 1,200 people, with more than 4,000 still missing, and the U.S. is only sending $500,000 in aid. More than that has likely been spent on gold leaf paint for statues in the White House. They defunded the warning system. The program was SERVIR, which mapped dangerous glacial lakes and issued flood warnings; CNN reported September 2 that its Nepal funding was cut and disaster struck a year later (CNN). Hold that beside Hartman, Colorado, population 30, declared abandoned on July 28 after ten months under a boil-water advisory and every trustee resigned. Resident Shawna Casey, to the Guardian: "Hartman is not a failed town. Hartman is a town that was failed by the systems designed to protect it." Same failure, different locations and magnitudes. How will the carefully (although imperfectly) built public programs that keep the world running survive the dismantling of every branch and office of the US government, and the selling of any remaining contracts to the highest bidders among the despot's cronies? Whole swaths of the infrastructure that society runs on behind the scenes are now so wrecked that it leaves not only the US, but those who relied on us as a former superpower, incredibly vulnerable. It would seem as though there has been a purposeful erosion of the US's very foundation, leaving it unstable and permeable to the infiltration of hostile foreign imperialistic interests, e.g. via AIPAC, NDAA, and the US-Israeli futures act. Just my half a cent, to take with a grain of salt.
🎭 Get Your Body to the WaterBuild a giant Water puppet in October. Parade it through the Owens Valley in April. Walking Water's FLOW (For the Love of Water) puppet parade is opening its doors. Two free-form intro workshops, 11am to 4pm, to see what's being dreamed up, make something, share food, and meet the artists: October 3 in Lone Pine and October 10 in Bishop. Longer maker sessions follow in March and April 2027, then the parade itself on April 17 in Bishop and April 24 in Lone Pine. Their words: "The Puppet Parade needs YOU, the local community, to make it stupendous, exciting, a celebration, and joyful." Closer in, Weaving Earth hosts the Walk of Reciprocity and Accountability in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 25 at 9am (tickets and donations). Guardianship happens on foot.
🌿 In ClosingThe Earth's suffering is often her healing. Our job is to listen. From the Guardianship month of the 28 Day Water Workbooks: "We are not just activists protecting water, rather, we are water, protecting herself." And a few pages on: "To deny the right to water is to deny the right to life." A federal court denied that right this week. Hartman lost it one unrepaired tank at a time. Nepal lost it in a budget line, with a warning system that had been listening for exactly this. And in the same seven days, beavers held a valley together against a megafire, a thousand volunteers counted pellets one by one, and a monk's friends are four days and $19,000 from protecting a wetland at the source of the Nile. Every one of those is the same thing the sargassum outside my window is: Water speaking. The seaweed, the fire refugia, the boil notice, the lead in Jackson's pipes. A fever tells the truth about the body. Our part is to hear the message and partner with the healing already underway. And water is always the first and the most important medicine for healing anything - personally, collectively, or ecologically. I'll close this week with a Jack Riemer quote I love: "To do instead of just pray, to become instead of merely to wish."
|