New Haven Independent

Marisol Vega (pictured above) was one of three Common Ground students who attended a Tuesday morning breakfast with their teacher to learn about the prosaically titled “Global & Local Water Concerns” at the New Haven Lawn Club.

The first keynoter was Ma Jun (pictured on left), considered by some to be China’s Rachel Carson for his 1999 book China’s Water Crisis, that country’s first major book on that issue. He developed the China Water Pollution Map, the first such public database in China. He said for thousands of years flooding was the biggest water problem, but since the 1980s “water scarcity, pollution and the destruction of river ecosystems are now the most prominent problems.” The problems were brought on by the multiple societal changes wrought by “industrialization, urbanization and globalization,” which have turned his country into the manufacturing center of the world, bringing with it intolerably high levels of air and water pollution. He said an amazing 30 percent of rivers in China are so polluted the water can’t be used for any purpose.

Ma Jun was followed by Connecticut environmental attorney Russ Brenneman (pictured). He pointed out that Connecticut used to be one of the most industrialized states in the country, but that manufacturing base has disappeared, much of it abroad. He said he can still buy the “same amount of stuff” as before — all imported. So the state’s air and water is much cleaner now, because other countries are paying the environmental costs of industrial production. He told a personal anecdote to illustrate his point. “Many years ago, we were the lawyers for the transfer of the machinery of what turned out to be the last brass plant in Waterbury to China,” he began. Click here to listen to the rest of the story, and his discussion of the true costs of production.

About 80 people attended the breakfast, which was co-sponsored by the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and the Watershed Fund of the Regional Water Authority. (Pictured in foreground is John Crawford, former head of the RWA.)

Vega was taking it all in. A junior, she has participated in her school’s Enviro-thon, learning about how to reduce global warming and competing with other schools on students’ knowledge of aquatics, forestry and wildlife in Connecticut. She said the presentations at the breakfast were very interesting, “especially when he talked about China’s problems and how they’re trying to get [people] to chip in and help with the environment. That’s basically what we’re doing here. They’re trying to do it too, so we can make the earth a better place to live at.”