This issue looks at the various ways we rely on water.

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From the Editor

WATER EVERYWHERE

A century has passed since residents of several villages in Scituate, Rhode Island, received notices that their properties were being condemned, and would be flooded, in order to create the Scituate Reservoir, a water supply that would provide for the needs of 60 percent of the state’s population.

Author Maury Klein chronicles both the heartbreak of the families who lost homes, farms, businesses, and even family graves, as well as the pressing need to provide residents with a safe, adequate water supply.

Today, as Hugh Markey writes, the prospect of altering the flow of water in Rhode Island’s rivers by removing decrepit dams evokes a visceral response from neighbors, who have strong connections to the ponds that these dams created decades, even centuries, ago. Though restoring river habitats and fish runs would provide ecological benefits, people have keen feelings about the waters they consider theirs.

This issue of 41°N considers water in some of the many ways it permeates our lives—as supplying a fundamental need for all living things, as a conduit for international trade, as a source of refreshment and recreation, and even as the hidden essence of a millennia-old fermented beverage.

Drink it in, and as always, please let us know what you think.

—MONICA ALLARD COX, Editor

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Please write to Letters, 41°N Editorial Office, Rhode Island Sea Grant, URI Bay Campus, Narragansett, RI 02882, or email 41N@gso.uri.edu.