Newsletter

Winter 2000: Notes of a Board Member

Loving Our Neighbors Downstream
By Kara Unger

Watermen and farmers in the Chesapeake Bay: one raises cows and corn in the rural hills of south-central Pennsylvania, the other catches fish and crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. Two communities connected by water - the stream flowing through these Pennsylvania hills is Sideling Hill Creek, which flows into the Potomac River, which in turn flows into the Chesapeake Bay.

On July 14 - 16 of this year, ten members of the Bethel Christian Church from the Sideling Hill Creek watershed went to Tangier Island at the invitation of the Tangier Watermen Stewardship for the Chesapeake group (see Susan Drake Emmerich's article in Vol.12, No.2 issue of Notes.)

The two groups first met last March when the islanders came up to share with our community how they have committed to being good stewards of the resources God has given them. It got us thinking - about the Chesapeake Bay, about the water we send downstream, and about God's mandate to care for creation.

On our visit to Tangier Island, we learned how the water we send downstream affects the Chesapeake Bay and the crab fishery. If water sent downstream contains soils or sediment, the water in the Bay gets cloudy. Nutrients from over-fertilized lawns and farm fields cause algal blooms in the Bay that further cloud the water. Sunlight cannot reach the aquatic grass beds that grow on the bottom. Without sunlight the grasses die, and the crabs have fewer places to go to safely molt. This diminishes the environmental health of the Bay and adversely affects the crab populations.

As our group was on the Bay, on waters that we sent downstream to the very place we were floating, we understood that these creatures that God made, and the people who depended on them, were affected by our actions upstream.

Our group came back committed to making sure our lands do not add sediments or nutrients to the stream waters which end up in the Chesapeake Bay. We also came back wanting to share this story with our neighbors here. And we want to keep connected by continuing the visits, sharing, and prayer between the two communities.

We all have neighbors downstream, whether in a literal sense or in the sense that our choices impact future generations. Making right environmental choices is an expression of our love for neighbor and God.

Au Sable Board member Kara Unger works for the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, lives on the Sideling Hill Creek watershed, and attends Bethel Christian Church. A fuller version of this article appears Creation Care, published by the Evangelical Environmental Network.

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