“Please only flush the toilets when you need to,” Linda, our host at the Brú Radharc na Mara Hostel tells us kindly. Her request is met with a few nervous glances. We file into the Hostel’s quaint foyer and I observe that the walls are covered with courtesy notices about water conservation. Outside the coast is relatively calm and salt water slowly laps at the weathered limestone. It is remote at Inis Oirr and fresh water is scarce—a surprising reality for some who wonder why, with ocean on all sides of us, that we must be so cautious. I approach one of the notices on the hostel billboard that reads, “Limit shower use.” Oh no. With all the hair I have, short showers are not my forte.
I have noticed that water conservation in Ireland is much more prevalent on both the mainland and Aran Islands than in the United States, forcing me to confront my privilege as someone who has long taken unlimited water usage as a given.
After greeting us, Linda explained that water is shipped to Inis Oirr on boats from Galway three times a day—a process that is very costly and not environmentally sustainable. As a result, proposals to develop water mains through the Aran Islands have been fervently debated throughout the past year. However, since water is currently shipped to Inis Oirr, islanders are left to the mercy of the weather to determine their water usage. “Last year,” Linda tells us, “we had a water curfew between 19:00 pm and 7:00 am due to a very dry summer. It was quite an adjustment for the students here before you.” More nervous glances pass around the room. I wonder what it would be like to live as a resident on the island and figure that a careful approach to water would become a second nature.
I tried to adopt this second nature for myself when I took a shower this morning. Upon turning the faucet, a jet of frigid water shot out. When the water did not increase in temperature after a minute, I got rather uneasy, then, deciding to suck-it-up and deal with it, I plunged into the icy cold. And I got used to it. As I showered, I was careful not to keep the water running while I was shampooing and conditioning my hair. The process was somewhat difficult, but it made a profound amount of sense in terms of conservation. Linda later told me that the long duration of cold water was due to newly installed faucets that limit hot water consumption.
While it may seem rather facile, showering here has made me appreciate and question my water usage back home. We take much for granted, and perhaps dangerously assume that hot showers are a universal aspect of the Westernized world. But this is not the case. Water is not an infinite resource and should not be treated as such. Hygiene is essential, yet respecting the earth is just as important.
Ireland is a country that is surrounded by water, also known as an island but there are parts of the Country that still don’t have a steady supply of water even though this country is known for their rain. In Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands of the coast of Western Ireland, we were made aware of the fact they are completed reliant on the mainland to get fresh water. This island has one freshwater lake on it called Loch Mör. The people on this island have one major problem with Loch Mör and that is because it is a dead lake. This means the water is stagnant, and has no streams or fresh water spring running into the lake. This is problematic as the water begins to smell because it is stagnant and also acidic. These are all factors on why the loch can’t be used as a viable source of drinking water for natives. This lead to people having to be reliant on other sources of fresh water. Before the more recent practice of shipping their freshwater in from Galway, the Islanders on this Island were completely reliant on the rainwater which one local described as, “dirty water” which we were unsure if he meant polluted or that the water had a salty taste to it. Everyday there is a water boat that makes two trips from Galway to the port here on the island where they then proceed to pump the fresh water from the mainland into storage containers located near the center of the island. When we were talking to a local resident named Eoghan (Owen) we learned that this island did not get electricity on the until the year 2000 when they laid a optic cable across the bay.. This is something he was happy about but he then mentioned the Irish government didn’t think about making that a joint project to also provide water to the island. This means that the Island will not get water if the boat is unable to make it one day which means that they are completely reliant on the mainland to survive on this island. While staying on the island we were told to conserve water the most we could and to only flush when necessary. This is something that I was not used, because in the United States my home has a well and my parents never told me not to flush the toilet or to make sure you rinse your dishes in the sink instead of keeping the water running the whole time. This was eye opening to me because I didn’t realize that even in a developed country that is known for its rain could still have the same water problems of third world countries
Stepping into the broom closet that was to be our home for the next two days at Kilronan, a town on Inis Mor, a island on the Aran Isles, we were not the happiest of campers. Imagine four guys packed into a small room, and then imagine the horror of the water shutting off unexpectedly for the rest of the night, and you have our experience. You may be thinking “But wait, no water on a island? How does that work?” You see the problem is that even though the island may be surrounded by water, none of it is acceptable for human use, and it is very hard to bring enough clean water to support an entire chain of islands to the mainland, we were told that there would be no water from 8:30 at night until 8:30 the next morning, something that we could never imagine dealing with back home! After the shock and confusion went away we all realized that cutting back on our water usage wasn’t hard, it may have been different from the norm for us, but it wasn’t impossible to do. The total amount of water that is usable by humans is about 3% of the entire water on this planet, so why do we think that we have an unlimited amount? I myself have been guilty of showers that last way longer than needed, but I never realized that my actions have consequences. Although the water shut off was only during the night time, it is still a sobering wake up call to what can happen if we aren’t careful with our resources, our planet is not a endless supply for us to take from, we must respect it and care for it, or we will not be able to care for ourselves.
