This Week in Water | 💧EPA stopped looking for microplastics & started looking for birth control + 7 tribes take back their lake & 6 days till the masterclass

Well Friends,

It's been a full week on my end. I've been recording podcast conversations I'm excited to release soon, holding scalar wave biowater harmonization sessions, making blog posts (does anyone actually read those? 😅 )and building the Guardians of the Source masterclass, which is 6 days out now. This weekend I'm hoping for some beach time to reset my eyes from the screen and connect with the One 💧 I'm serving through all of this. I hope you've found time this week to do what you love, also.

This week the wins are real, the absurdity is real, and the masterclass ties them together. Without further ado, let's dive in to This Week In Water:

⚔️ Guardians of the Source Masterclass: Join Me on Sept 24th

For as long as there have been armies, Water has been the weapon under the weapon.

Cortés cut Tenochtitlan's aqueduct before he took the city. Settlers in Australia poisoned waterholes to clear Aborigines from the land. German troops sealed desert waterholes, killing 4 out of every 5 people living there. The Nazis reflooded Italy's marshes to bring back malaria. The US bombed North Korea's irrigation dams to drown the rice crop, then dammed its own rivers over 152,000 acres of the Fort Berthold reservation and 10,000 acres of treaty-guaranteed Seneca land, leaving native americans without water. Saddam Hussein drained 9,000 square miles of marshes to starve out people who had lived in them for 5,000 years, wiping out 90% of them. Israel holds 80% of the West Bank's aquifer, and as of last month more than half of Gaza's population, 1.3 million people, has less than 6 liters of Water a day to drink and cook with. That's one toilet flush, compared to an emergency minimum of 15.. To control Water has always been to control who lives, who leaves, and who submits.

That's the overt version, and it's genocide by drought, warfare you can see. The Blue Gold Rush is the quiet version. Same objective, no visible army. When they turn Water into a futures contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, when Bechtel takes over the taps of Cochabamba and it becomes illegal for a Bolivian family to collect the rain that falls on their own roof, when a Nestlé chairman goes on record that Water is a "foodstuff" that "should have a market value," you achieve through a spreadsheet what used to require a siege. This is the great Water heist: tokenization, Wall Street, and the enclosure of the public commons. The well still gets taken. It gets price-hiked and poisoned, and then you must pay to drink neurotoxins like fluoride, if you want to drink water at all. The people still get moved off the land. Nobody has to fire a shot, and almost nobody notices it's a silent water war.

There's a document from 1979 that names this logic, "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars," describing economic control as a form of undeclared warfare waged on a population that never realizes it's under attack. It describes exactly what's being done to Water right now. The weapon is the price, is the poisons. The battlefield is your utility bill and your endocrine system. And the only defense is a population that recognizes the war for what it is and refuses to concede their Source. Part of this recognition demands that we see how water has been used as a tool of coercive control and outright violence all throughout time. Because those who don't understand history will repeat it.

This is the thirst for power, and how Water became a weapon, from the Assyrian wells to the trading floor. Seeing that war on Water clearly, and learning how we take her back, is what Guardians of the Source is for. You're being called to take your place among her guardians. Thursday, September 24, 5pm Central.

Reserve your place: $22 live + replay. $55 for permanent lifetime access.

🐟 Seven Tribes Just Took Their Seat at Clear Lake

California's largest lake now has seven tribal governments managing it, for the first time ever.

In another waterback victory for indigenous people, on September 11, at the Big Valley Rancheria in Lakeport, seven Pomo tribal governments signed the Clear Lake Watershed and Chi-co agreement with the State of California and Lake County, giving the tribes a formal co-management role over the largest lake inside the state. It is the first watershed co-management agreement created under California's Tribal Stewardship Policy, which aims to share management of millions of acres of land and coastal Water with tribes. (Press Democrat)

The lake needs them. Clear Lake has lost more than 90% of its wetlands, the natural filter that once caught phosphorus before it fed the toxic algal blooms that now spread across the Water every summer. The Clear Lake hitch, a fish found nowhere else on Earth and central to Pomo culture, has declined roughly a hundredfold from historic levels. Under the agreement, tribal, county, and state governments will write annual work plans together and coordinate every restoration decision in the watershed, starting with an oxygenation system for the deep Water and an algae-harvesting project.

Middletown Rancheria Chairman Jose "Moke" Simon III, said to the officials at the table: "When you put your name on that paper, you better mean it. We've signed things in the past. We are going to hold you to this one." And he's right. The US has ratified about 370 treaties with Native nations and, by the Smithsonian's accounting, not a single one of them has been kept whole. So, Moke's suspicions are well founded, and let's hope that this contract moves forward as intended for the greatest good of water.

🔬 The EPA Is Now Testing Your Water for Birth Control, But Not Microplastics

The EPA has stopped testing for microplastics, and instead is targeting womens health.

In July, the EPA proposed its Sixth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule, the 30 chemicals every large public Water system in America must test for this cycle. Seven governors and a coalition of environmental groups petitioned to add microplastics. But the EPA declined, citing the lack of a validated test method. (Federal Register, C&EN)

Then on September 9, Administrator Zeldin and HHS Secretary Kennedy announced a national drinking Water study screening for 1,400 "emerging contaminants." Read the EPA's own chemical list. Mifepristone is on it, with three of its metabolites. Misoprostol and its acid. Ethinyl estradiol, levonorgestrel, norethindrone, norgestimate, drospirenone, desogestrel, etonogestrel, medroxyprogesterone. Ten contraceptive hormones and abortion medications, as anti-choice lobbies had petitioned for in May. Microplastics appear nowhere in the list of 1,400. (EPA release).

This is the same year the EPA rescinded four of its six PFAS drinking Water limits, pushed the PFOA and PFOS deadline to 2031, and moved to strip Clean Water Act protection from 79% of the country's rivers. A government that refuses to look for plastic in your Water has found the budget to look for what's in women's bloodstreams. This is not about public health and safety, and it's not about the purity of our drinking water. But it's a big step forward in this administration's machiavellian machiavellian obsession with controlling and regulating women's bodies. Public health is just the costume. The study identifies whether a molecule is present and never how much: this is surveillance with a lab coat on.

Especially considering that they are testing for the mere presence, but not the quantity of these phamarceuticals (especially not within the context of all the other chemicals and pharmaceuticals present in the water, you can be sure that when they find them in the water, there will be a public campaign to condemn and reduce womens medical access, all in the name of water safety. You can look forward to yet another opportunity for this administration to "lie with statistics" and manufacture consent for the rollback of rights. Because we have known for years that in major cities, there are an average about 50 pharmaceuticals flowing through closed-loop municipal systems. They're not asking how to clean the water, that technology already exists and isn't being implemented... Instead they're asking how to prevent womens access to healthcare, and adding water to the list of excuses for doing so.

The WOTUS comment window is still open through October 9: take action here.

🌿 Bristol Is Becoming the UK's First Wetland City

A city with 100 miles of waterways is putting water back where it belongs.

More good news: On September 8, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust announced a five-year programme to make Bristol the UK's first Ramsar-accredited Wetland City: more than 200 projects, from restoring ponds, brooks, and rivers in urban parks to building mini wetlands that catch and redirect rain before it floods a street. Nearly one in three Bristol homes sat at risk of flooding in 2025, and city centres run up to 6°C hotter than the land around them during heatwaves. Wetlands answer both. (WWT)

The first pieces are already floating. In July, two floating wetland ecosystems went into Bristol's historic harbour beside the SS Great Britain, planted with native species that filter the Water and give young birds a nursery, built by WWT, Planet Wild, and Biomatrix Water with local volunteers. (Biomatrix) There are 74 accredited Wetland Cities in 27 countries and none yet in the UK. Britain has lost 75% of its wetlands. A city choosing to grow them back, block by block, is the opposite of enclosure. This is the kind of collaborative effort that makes a difference, and we love to see it!

🚶♀️ A Women's Water Walk Starts Tomorrow, and You Have Until Monday to Comment To Stop A Pipeline

Indigenous grandmothers walk a pipeline route tomorrow to raise awareness that federal comments close Monday at 5pm.

They will walk 7.5 miles the first day, crisscrossing the route of the Constitution Pipeline, a 30-inch fracked-gas line proposed by Oklahoma-based Williams that would trench through more than 300 bodies of Water and 82 trout streams across 125 miles. New York rejected it in 2016 as a danger to the state's Water. Now it's back, re-permitted at federal speed with almost no community consultation. (womenswaterwalk.org)

FERC's environmental assessment is open for public comment until Monday, September 21 at 5pm ET.

Stop the Constitution Pipeline has a step-by-step guide and a sample comment;
the Federal Register notice has the docket.

Tomorrow at 11am, at Arctic Lake in Oquaga Creek State Park, New York, the Women's Water Walk opens with a fire ceremony led by Owén:nakon Sandra Deer, a Haudenosaunee Bear Clan grandmother, and Abuela Kunana of the New York Moondance. Sunday evening the walkers reach Sidney, where Dar Williams, Bethany Yarrow, and members of the Onondaga Women's Singers sing at La Patrona from 3 to 6:30pm. If you're within driving distance of the Catskills, go. If you're not, comment.

📖 On the Blog: Is Structured Water Real?

Structured Water is written everywhere in nature. Two new posts show you where.

Two new posts went up this week. Is Structured Water Real? The Evidence Is Written Everywhere in Nature walks the evidence from Gerald Pollack's fourth-phase measurements to the way a mountain stream, a living cell, and a ripe fruit all hold Water in the same ordered, gel-like state, and why the flat, chlorinated Water at the tap has lost it.

The Five Most Profound Benefits of Structured Water is the companion piece on why quality outranks quantity once Water crosses a cell membrane.

If you want to feel the difference at home this week, the Natural Action Technologies line (from portable, to whole-home, to undersink, to shower water structurers) uses code WATERISLIFE-15, and the full range of structurers is in the shop.

🎙️ New Videos on the Channel, and Three More Coming

This week I have for you a hydropunk, a book list, and the studies behind Korean chi balls.

The new Water is Life Podcast episode with Bridger, the Hydropunk, is live: What Is Watershed Democracy? The Hydropunk Plan to Revive Wetlands and Prevent Water Scarcity, 78 minutes on wetland-compatible infrastructure and his vision for how humanity can live inside the abundance that only water provides.

Also up: a short reel on the best Water guardianship books to read if you want to step into your water protector era. (Or, just join the masterclass and I'll give you the full download and save you the reading time!)

Click "Notify Me" on Chi Balls for Water: What They Are, How They Work, and What the Studies Say, premiering September 21 at 10am, and on MJ Pangman, author of Dancing with Water, on reviving comatose tap and bottled Water, September 28 at 10am.

Recorded this week for the season ahead: Paolo Renati on Quantum Electrodynamics and Coherent Domains in Water, and Roudy Nassif on light, Water, and our circadian rhythms. Both of these conversations were so fun for me, and I'm sure you'll enjoy them too!

🌍 Where to Be This Week

🩵 Zach Weiss hosts a free public talk, Restoring Water Security to the Land, on Wednesday, September 23 at 5:30pm at Amigos Locale in Taos, New Mexico, on the same techniques that revived nine rivers and recharged 250,000 wells in the desert of India, and how they apply to northern New Mexico. (Water Stories)

💙 The Nile wetland campaign that I shared with you last week stands at $857,978 as of this morning, just under the $875,000 deposit that was due Monday; the organizers haven't posted whether offline gifts closed the gap, and the full balance is still due November 15. The online benefit with Bhante Buddharakkhita is Thursday, September 24 at 8pm ET, two hours after Guardians of the Source ends. Give your donation here.

🩵 And during Climate Week in New York, Earth Law Center's Indigenous Youth Ocean Congress launches the Indigenous Youth Declaration for the Rights of the Ocean, honoring the Ocean as a living relative with standing in law. (Earth Law Center)

💙 The World Water Community's monthly Voices of Water gathering is Tuesday, September 22 at 12pm ET.

🌿 In The Wake...

From the Guardianship Workbook: "Can life be owned? No, of course not, life is the vivacity under the will of nature alone. But if the sustenance of life is owned, then the lives of all who require it are controlled as well. In fact, the Chinese symbol for water is also the symbol for control."

Hold this week's updates up to that concept: A federal agency chooses which molecules in your glass are worth finding, based on their own agenda and picks the ones that protect a woman's health and bodily sovereignty over the plastic that degrades everyone's. A gas company gets a second run at 300 bodies of Water because the first answer was no. Seven indigenous nations sign a paper and tell the state, to its face, that this time they will hold them to their promises. Grandmothers walk a pipeline road to protect water. A city plants its harbour to safeguard its watershed.

Who controls the Water controls the people, and every story above is someone deciding who that will be. I pray that you, and your local community, will decide that your watershed belongs to all of you, as a public commons, and then start moving and acting in accordance with this truth - in a decentralized, community oriented, non-hierarchical way, just the same way that water herself moves. And in this way, water is the most powerful substance in existence, the one that rules the entire planet, governs the rise and fall of empires, the migration patterns, the climate, and every living being. She does so, not by asserting power and dominance, but by moving in a local, fractal, decentralized way. And those of us who love and serve Life must learn from water how to protect her.

Put Winona LaDuke's question to your friends this week:

"Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn't make a corporation a terrorist."

Ask it out loud. Comment on the pipeline before Monday. Donate to help the Nile if you can. Come learn the whole arc on Thursday. And if your own Water needs attention, book a 1-on-1 hydration consultation.

Be well and be water my friend, 💦

Be well and be water my friend, 💦 P.S. We're always here to answer your water-related queries or to assist you in exploring our range of products and courses. Feel free to reach out anytime!