One of Capt. Pete's RiverTrek Narrations

 

Welcome aboard the Chattanooga Star riverboat! My name is Pete and I am your Captain today. Although the Chattanooga Star is a nostalgic replica of a turn of the century steamer, she is a modern, all steel vessel, inspected each year by the United States Coast Guard. She is 65’ long, 24’ wide, and licensed for 145.And yes, the paddlewheels are real; there are no propellers onboard. Today, our cruise will take us about six miles up your river.

Now the whole reason the Chattanooga Star is here on your waterway is because we are on a voyage we call Rivertrek. The whole purpose of this journey is to take schools and students much like yourselves on your river. That’s right, this is your river, it belongs to you just as it belongs to each of us.

O.K. how many this morning had breakfast? Well that’s a good way to start the day. Now how many brushed your teeth this morning? It’s nice to see a few more hands go up. And we’ll assume that most of you have had a bath or shower in the last day or two. Who will tell me what these three things have in common? That’s right, water!

Did you know that in the United States each day the average person uses about 100 gallons of water? Bathing, cooking, cleaning. But that’s not all of the water we use. Every product and service,your food, clothes, homes, automobiles all require water to make them. Just to turn on a light requires water to make the electricity. That increases our average daily use per person to over 2000 gallons a day. That’s a lot of water. And with almost 300 million people in the United States we use a very large amount of water. Fortunately we have a lot of water in our country, most of it in the eastern half of the United States, and most of it in rivers very similar to the one we are on today.

When you are at home and you want a glass of water you open a faucet and almost like magic, out comes clean water, you can drink it right then. Most of the world doesn’t have such luxury;We are fortunate in the United States, we can go just about anywhere and the water is safe to drink. Unfortunatly, most people of the world do not even have faucets, let alone clean water you can drink right then. Then when you are through with that water you pour it down the drain, and it disappears, again, almost like magic. Well we all know it is not magic. The various governments, local, state, and federal have many laws, and many people who work very hard to filter, process, and treat, both our drinking water and our wastewater. When you pour something down the drain we call that: wastewater.

Most of the communities along our waterways use the water right out of the river. Generally just upstream of the community water is pulled out of the river then filtered, processed, and treated, then pumped around the community so when you open a faucet, out comes clean water. Then when you’re through with the water it goes down the drain, and again is filtered, processed and treated, then frequently, just down stream of the community it is pumped back into the same river it came out of in the first place. The water we are floating in today has already been used dozens of times up-river by communities, agriculture, and industry, as well as for transportation and recreation. And it will be used dozens more times before it reaches the ocean, again used by agriculture, communities, industry, transportation, and recreation.

Now I don’t say any of this to make anyone uncomfortable. Things have been this way for a long time and will continue this way into the foreseeable future. Certainly into your adulthood. I mention it because we all use water; we all need clean water; and, it takes all of us, individually and collectively, to care for our water.

Well the Chattanooga Star traveled a long ways so I could tell you all this. We do this with the hope the next time you open a faucet or pour something down the drain you might think about from where the water came and to where goes. And perhaps, some of you might be a little curious to know more and investigate further on your own.

The story of water is circular; in a sense it begins in the clouds, falls to the earth, gathers from creeks to streams to rivers to the oceans, then evaporates and becomes rain again.. In between, are the aquifers and ground water, our dams and reservoirs. The quality of life we enjoy is directly related to the quality of water of our nation. Water affects our lives, and we affect our water.