Today is a Friday in mid-August. The fall semester gathers energy like a tropical depression lingering in the mid-Atlantic. That means my attention now turns toward preparing syllabi, organizing lectures and notes, and the sundry admin matters connected to the unforgiving reality of my “day job.” Substack must wait.

So, in lieu of a new article, today I’m re-posting one that first appeared in May, and that most of you newer subscribers likely never saw. It got a very positive response from the older crew of readers, for which I’m grateful. I really enjoyed reading the resulting comments. And I took these thoughtful and often very personal responses as mild confirmation of my bias that most nature lovers have a bit of animist in them. Or a lot of animist in them. To quote from Robinson Jeffers’ poem “Carmel Point”:

As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

If you’re new to No Lines in Nature, I hope you enjoy this post, too.

And, while I am attending to other things, more nature- and environmental action-centered articles are already in the hopper, including ones currently being attended to by my wonderful co-authors.

To read the full article, just click below.

With gratitude,

Ranjit

Today’s article is co-authored with my colleague Dr. Eric Bonds, Professor of Sociology at the University of Mary Washington. Eric studies climate change and environmental inequality in Virginia.

***

Henry David Thoreau believed mightily in individual acts of conscience. For instance, here’s Thoreau on the topic of slavery, which he vehemently opposed:

I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name — if ten honest men only — aye, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever.

Philosophically, Thoreau is as American as it gets. We’re all taught from childhood about the power of the individual to effect change. Curiously, when analyzing how big corporations speak to us, one might well think that they, too, swallowed Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience whole.

Case in point: Remember the “carbon footprint calculator?”

In 2004, global oil giant BP unveiled this device for measuring one’s daily impact on climate change. A brainchild of the PR firm Olgivy & Mather, the calculator asked questions in order to help people assess their culpability in effecting climate change. The idea was that by making a few changes to our lifestyles, we could all move forward and bring this disastrous problem to heel. Consume less, travel less, buy smarter.

BP invested huge sums in the PR campaign. It tweeted an ad for the calculator decorated with pictures of bicycles and broccoli and cute sayings like “Eat Local” and “Feed Tums, Not Bins.”

In fact, BP’s massive campaign made “carbon footprint” the household term it is today.

Going back in time, older folks may recall the 1971 ad where a dignified Native American man shed a tear after seeing trash tossed out of a car window. Over stirring music, a stern narrator informed us that “People start pollution. People can stop it.” The ad showed a New York mailing address you could write to for a list of “71 things you can do to stop pollution.”

The “Crying Indian” ad won prestigious advertising awards (even though the actor wasn’t really Native American). One of your coauthors recalls firsthand how that guy’s single tear wreaked havoc on the mind of a child. He felt guilty for every gum wrapper he’d ever tossed aside.

What ties these two influential ad campaigns together? A very simple deception.

They put the responsibility for solving big problems on us, the little people.

BP’s products, along with those of other oil giants like Chevron, Exxon, and Shell, were responsible for 10 percent of global carbon emissions just in the period from 1965 to 2022. According to the environmental action group ClientEarth, just 100 companies like BP are responsible for 71 percent of all global CO2 and methane emissions.

And Coca Cola, a major funder of the “Crying Indian” ad campaign, has been deemed the “World’s Biggest Plastic Polluter.” Fifty-plus years after the ad appeared, the Center for Biological Diversity estimates that Coke produces 134 billion single-use plastic bottles every year. The iconic anti-litter ad’s other backers included Pepsi and Anheuser Busch. It’s their plastic bottles and packaging that are filling up the oceans.

Clearly, nothing we as individuals ever do will in any way heal the environment compared to what these global corporations could do, if they were serious about it.

But they don’t want you thinking that. Their way of doing business is immensely profitable. So, they point the cannon at you.

Decades after we tallied our carbon footprint and cried with the “Indian,” climate change and pollution remain basic problems. But environmental threats change over time, too. Today, no issue flummoxes our region more than the rapid proliferation of data centers.

The data center boom has hit Virginia harder than any other state. Logically, many residents worry about its effects, which makes the industry nervous. So now we’re being carpet-bombed with pro-data center ads on TV and online. Virginia Connects, the voice of data center supporters like Amazon, The Data Center Coalition, and the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, produces many such ads.

Filled with optimism, Virginia Connects’ ad campaign pushes a distinct message: Data centers are here to help people shoulder their responsibilities.

Here’s a sample ad:

This cheery ad is titled “Virginia’s Data Centers Are There For You.” Which begs the question — for you to do what?

“We help your family conserve energy and live more sustainably,” the narrator answers over the kind of anodyne, upbeat music one associates with modern electoral campaigns.

You ARE doing that, aren’t you, dear reader? Conserving energy and living sustainably? Because the data centers are here to help you.

Certainly, the industry knows how much you’ve already helped them. But its PR campaign is more evasive about that. Another Virginia Connects ad, titled “Businesses are Rethinking Data Centers: Tax Revenues,” tells viewers that

“[Data center] businesses are rethinking about how data centers are built. That means paying for every watt of energy they use…”

“Rethinking?” What a nice admission that they haven’t been getting an electric bill like everyone else’s, but rather one that funnels costs to ratepayers like us.

And what the ads won’t even touch is that we’ve also been paying for the expanded energy infrastructure needed to support this handful of uber-wealthy corporations, even though most of what’s being built for them today has nothing to do with current individual consumer demand. There’s plenty enough data center capacity out there to meet our needs on “the cloud.” What they’re doing now is speculating on the future importance of AI — a prospect many Virginians find disturbing in terms of surveillance, lost jobs, etc.

We’ve done enough already. Yet the whole industry pushes you to do more. The Director of Sustainability at NTT Global Data Centers (an IT consulting firm) advises each of us to manage our emails more efficiently, turn off our video cameras, and better organize our digital folders. No behavior modification is too small — for you to make.

Such PR campaigns artfully place data center owners and developers in unobtrusive roles when it comes to spiking prices, rising infrastructure demands, and depleting resources. Throughout, they imply that data centers aren’t the cause of anything bad.

We know this misdirection to be utterly disingenuous. According to the World Resources Institute, data centers impact their communities in many ways, including:

• They consume massive amounts of energy. “A single modern AI data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes; many of the larger ones now being built are expected to consume up to 20 times that amount.”

• They consume massive amounts of water. “Mid-sized facilities can use up to 300,000 gallons of water a day, while large facilities can consume as much as 5 million gallons daily — comparable to what a small town uses.” [Some data centers use “reclaimed” rather than potable water, but with evaporation most of that water escapes, depleting local water supplies by reducing replenishment. As the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy observes, water is a finite resource, and “what goes unacknowledged, from a natural systems perspective, is that all water is local.”]

• They significantly add to air pollution and climate change. “Many facilities rely on gas-fired generation for routine operations alongside diesel generators for emergency backup. Both come with climate and health risks.”

Energy and water consumption, air pollution, climate change, and health risks. You’re doing something about that, right?

Indeed, many of us do answer the call. When we keep our home thermostat a few degrees warmer in summer, or take shorter showers, we lessen our personal impact on the environment.

But let’s not fool ourselves.

Serious environmentalists know that focusing on individuals is an incredibly inefficient way to fix big problems. Elizabeth DeSombre, author of Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things, writes:

If you think about the number of people one would have to individually persuade to change behavior (and how many behaviors each would have to change), in a country of millions or a world of billions, it’s easy to see how a solution that focuses on changing individual behavior has no hope of creating change as quickly as ecological conditions require.1

What would produce real change? DeSombre concludes, “The best way to change a lot of behavior of a lot of people reasonably quickly is for that change to be structural or systemic.”

Which is to say — contra Thoreau — that if one Virginian pledges to consume less energy — aye, if ten thousand commit to such a pledge — it would not have anywhere near the impact of a single piece of good legislation. Legislation that, for example, demands all developers pay the costs associated with building a clean energy infrastructure, or slaps stringent emissions standards on every data center built in our state.

Or pauses data center construction until we have a handle on things.

Be assured that the data center owners and operators know all this. And systemic change via public-minded legislation is precisely what they don’t want to see. It might hurt their bottom lines.

So, Virginia Connects and the actors behind it want you worrying about your consumption habits, not theirs.

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Luckily, we citizens have choices.

First, please continue to recycle plastics. Maybe even wear that musty old jacket for one more season. But don’t let corporate jiu jitsu trick you.

As one of us recently wrote, “Let’s not expect the IT and digital infrastructure industry (and the billionaires behind it) to act like angels.” These are people like Jeff Bezos, who spent $46-56 million on a single wedding. Climate change and our region’s air and water quality aren’t keeping them up at night. In the name of profit, their data centers will visit far more lasting environmental harm on our region than any of us ever could. So choose not to be fooled.

Second, the fact remains that the data center industry needs our representatives’ permission to build in our region. And we don’t need angels to fix our problems.

We need elected officials and city and county administrators who will protect our air, water, and land — the fundamentals of our children’s futures. They have to ask tough questions, view every data center claim with skepticism, and deliver strong legislation that minimizes environmental harm.

Corporations put the onus of a healthy environment on us as individuals. Confound them, and do exactly that — vote for leaders who see through their deceptions.

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Jeff Eastland and I co-authored this article.

***

It’s high summer now, and we thought it would be a good idea to list the known leaks of untreated sewage — both great and small — that have afflicted the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers since the start of 2026.

Why would we do that? We’ll get to that later.

We gathered this information from various radio and online news sources, personal communications with local journalists and friends, and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) website. The Free-Lance Star’s Scott Shenk has done especially commendable work tracking sewage spills in Fredericksburg. In places, the reports we looked at hold minor inconsistencies. We apologize beforehand for any errors. In total, however, we think this list makes clear that it has been a very grim year for local waterways. This is especially so when you consider that in Fredericksburg alone, no sewage spills were reported in 2025.

Keep in mind, too, that our region is riverine. Water — the “universal solvent” — is uniquely able to dissolve and carry toxins, especially after rainstorms. So almost everything that flows into our backyards and streets ultimately ends up in the streams and rivers.

January 19 to March 14

Potomac River. 2026 begins with a bang. In the “Potomac Interceptor collapse,” for two months a broken 72-inch pipe in Maryland leaks 243 million gallons of untreated sewage into the river. Repairs aren’t completed until mid-March. This is likely the worst such spill in US history. It prompts a region-wide health and environmental state of emergency and restrictions on fishing and recreation. (Potomac River Keeper Network)

February 7

Stafford County. A clogged manhole spills 9,000 gallons of raw sewage, impacting Aquia Creek as reported by Virginia DEQ.

February 26

Fredericksburg. 125,000 gallons of raw sewage leaks from clogged manholes.

March 12

Fredericksburg. 9,000 gallons of wastewater is reported spilled near the town’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.

March 13

Fredericksburg. About 77,500 gallons of untreated wastewater overflows from three manholes, discharging into Hazel Run, a tributary of the Rappahannock River.

Around March 13

Fredericksburg. The same three manholes overflows again. A tiny spill (1 gallon) goes straight into the Rappahannock River.

April 23

Fredericksburg. About 500 gallons of raw sewage flows from a manhole. Humans are potentially exposed, according to reports.

May 4

Fredericksburg. A manhole overflows, dumping 1,000 of sewage near Fall Hill. Potential human exposure is reported.

May 7

Fredericksburg. 99 gallons of wastewater overflows from a manhole at Caroline and Ford streets.

May 8

Fredericksburg. The same manhole spews another 1,000 gallons of raw sewage with potential human exposure. Virginia DEQ reports an unknown amount reached the storm drain, which flows into the river.

June 15

Fredericksburg. City crews report an undetermined amount of wastewater overflow. Virginia DEQ says the sewage threatens Deep Run, which connects to the Rappahannock River.

June 17

Fredericksburg. The City reports an unknown volume of untreated wastewater is discharged into state waters following a power outage affecting manholes near Dixon Street.

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July 10

Fredericksburg. About 1,000 gallons of untreated wastewater spills from a pump station near Caroline St.

July 15

Fredericksburg. A citizen reports an overflow from a manhole behind WalMart at Central Park. The amount leaked appears minimal. The DEQ investigation is still ongoing.

July 21

Stafford County. Jesse Adams, founder of Waterway Cleanups, an environmental non-profit located in Stafford County, discovers raw sewage leaking above Accokeek Creek. Accokeek Creek runs into Potomac Creek in the area of the 3,000-acre Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve. Water from both creeks ultimately flows into the Potomac River. The 18-inch sewage pipe leak is believed to date June 7 at least, when Adams first smelled a foul odor at Stafford’s Civil War Park. This means the sewage probably flowed for about six weeks. Adams relates his experience, the aftermath, and likely impacts here.

You can see — and hear — the pipe spewing raw sewage in this video, taken by Adam’s colleague Sarah Balon:

That’s quite a list of sewage spills. But it’s not the whole story.

It’s important to note that all these events were observed and reported. Our list doesn’t include the daily abuses of local waterways that typically go unnoticed. These include chronically-leaking pipes from aging subdivisions, fertilizers washed into streams by a downpour, the guy who pours used engine oil into a ditch or storm drain, and so on. This “normal” pollution often puts our local creeks in the worst of the Environmental Protection Agency’s five water quality categories.

So, why create a list of the raw sewage spills of the first seven months of 2026?

At this time of year, many people are enjoying local rivers and creeks. They’re out swimming and fishing, or simply taking in the summertime bloom of the native yellow lotus.

If you’re unaware of the latter, here’s a glimpse of what you’re missing on Stafford County’s Accokeek Creek. This video was made just a few days ago by one of this article’s authors:

Many people love our local waterways. Both of us are proud to serve on Stafford County’s Wetlands and Chesapeake Bay Boards, helping to ensure healthy rivers and creeks. And we know there is no greater ally in the fight to contain waterway pollution than nature’s own remedy, wetlands. As the Chesapeake Bay Program explains, wetlands do far more than provide necessary habitat for hundreds of species of fish, birds, mammals, and invertebrates:

Wetlands act like a sponge, soaking up stormwater and dampening storm surges. By trapping polluted runoff, they help slow the flow of nutrients, sediment and chemical contaminants into rivers, streams and the Bay.

In other words, wetlands protect us from ourselves.

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Evidence of this protection is abundant even at the local level. Take the July 21st event in Stafford County. When Jesse Adams and Sarah Balon tested the water at the Accokeek Creek spill site, they found nearly three times the acceptable limit for E. coli, a bacteria that can cause severe illness in humans. Yet, when a day or two later they tested the water downstream at the Crow’s Nest preserve’s canoe launch, they found normal bacteria levels and zero E. coli.

The difference? Wetlands. As Adams writes,

…the wetlands had successfully filtered out the harmful bacteria that could have posed significant health risks to residents who recreate in lower Accokeek Creek every day.

There’s a big problem, though.

Wetlands are in serious trouble, both locally and nationwide. Longstanding federal protections on wetlands dating back to the 1972 Clean Water Act are being dramatically rolled back at the request of energy and business groups. Combined with the impacts of development and rising sea levels, it’s projected that almost 90 percent of Virginia’s wetlands will be gone by 2080.

This would be an environmental disaster — one that would certainly come back to haunt us. To quote the Norfolk-based nonprofit Wetlands Watch,

We need to view our wetlands, dunes, and shorelines as critical infrastructure, deserving protection in its own right.

We couldn’t agree more.

Wetlands preservation is self-preservation.

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And I’m deeply grateful for that.

Our farm is situated just three miles east – within view of a circling hawk – of the boulder-strewn “fall line” that divides the hilly Piedmont and gently sloping Coastal Plain regions. Here, northern glaciers alternately flooded and exposed the textured land to ocean waters. Fields and woods now cover over the eroded sand and gravel the rains have washed down from the Blue Ridge Mountains seventy miles away. Following the melt of the last Ice Age sheets five to six thousand years ago, the weather turned warmer and wetter. Water then filled in the Chesapeake Bay and raised the tidal zone to the farm’s longitude.

These ancient events gifted the region with inexhaustible natural energy. Nutritive species of oaks, chestnuts, and hickories appeared where spruces, fir, and scattered woody shrubs had long prevailed.1

We live atop this stunning geologic windfall. The first time my brother and I saw Potomac Creek, we ran exuberantly through hay fields that felt endless against our small selves. Thousands of generations of biota have shared our spontaneous, joyful response to such abundant life. This well-watered land begs for settlement.

Thinking about bountiful local nature brings to mind a talk given a few years ago at the University of Mary Washington by Charles “Bootsie” Bullock, Chief of the local Patawomeck Tribe. Chief Bootsie and I are of roughly the same age. In his talk, he movingly described a Potomac Creek that I recognized immediately: a place where — until sometime in the late ‘70s, perhaps — a kid could freely cross property lines in search of fish or simply a good spot to while away the hours. Adults didn’t care; we kids were mostly invisible to folks with bigger things to worry about.

That creek is gone now. Stafford County’s population has nearly quadrupled since the 1970s. Such rapid growth often disorients older residents. And today, it’s always a struggle to find access to fields, woods, and water, as property values have increased and landowners have become, for lack of a better word, meaner.

Growing maudlin over the future of Potomac Creek is unproductive. No one should be so mindless as to want to exchange the present for the past. Yet, I suspect many will agree that conservationist Aldo Leopold hit a nerve when he wrote “I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness.”

The simple fact is that young people today cannot roam as my generation did.

Problems of access to the land and exclusion have thoughtful people worried.

A while back, I wrote a review of UVa historian Andrew Kahrl’s excellent book Free the Beaches. Kahrl recounts the battles to overcome the entrenched divides that kept Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” shoreline inaccessible to many people. Even local residents couldn’t stand in the sand if they belonged to the “wrong” racial or economic group. I began my review with a lesson I’d drawn from the book: “You can tell an awful lot about a place by looking at its beaches.” Kahrl taught me to observe very carefully who’s playing in the sand.

I apply that lesson to my homeplace, too. At times, it’s good for all of us to ask:

What can we tell about our region by looking at who has access to local nature? To clean water and green, open spaces?

We’re always living in the wake of our forebears’ decisions. I’m no Marxist, but it’s fair to say that on Potomac Creek, for countless generations until quite recently, nothing influenced people’s status and equanimity more than their relationship to the land. In a traditionally rural society like ours, good land was the primary means of production and wealth. So if you knew someone’s property lines, you pretty much knew, with only the mildest hyperbole, who they were and where they stood in the community.

The gravity of land ownership has never quite faded away. While conducting research in Stafford County, I found that people with deep local roots frequently break into tears when discussing their land, even with a complete stranger. Often, the land we hold feeds our sense of self.

And Potomac Creek runs through a state where land relations have always been fraught.

“Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” the official state song from 1940 until 1997, begins with the lyrics

Carry me back to old Virginny,

There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow,

There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time,

There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.

The song’s blithe nostalgia for chattel slavery overwhelms the senses (in a later verse, the enslaved singer improbably yearns to greet his “massa” in the afterlife). Regrettably, its racism also buries an implicit but more universal message: the sweetness of fecund land. The lyrics laud the Virginia soil’s ability to nurture valuable crops and offer habitat to wildlife like songbirds. Such land is perhaps the most coveted resource in human history.

Yet, as the old state song suggests, for most of its existence Virginia has also been a place where access to land runs hand-in-hand with the urgency of skin color.2

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My family faced this reality as soon as we moved here. Arriving from Indiana, my parents began looking for a place to rent in Fredericksburg, across the river from Stafford County. My White German mother saw a newspaper ad and met with the landlord. When my Asian father appeared later to see the house for himself, it quickly became unavailable. That was the year the Supreme Court issued Loving v. Virginia, a decision that found the state’s ban on interracial marriage unconstitutional. Three years old, I was about to enter the area’s first racially integrated preschool.

If we look carefully, we can see how this conscious ordering and reordering continues to affect where our feet touch the soil.

Recent arrivals usually absorb the unwritten rules of their new home pretty quickly. In our daily errands, we see the open spaces where Spanish-speaking residents feel free to gather and relax, like Falmouth Beach. Or where Afghan families like bringing their families — Pratt Park comes to mind. The reasons are manifold, but people become spatially sorted less by law than by custom.

And in his talk at the university, Chief Bootsie gratefully acknowledged that Stafford County lets his White Oak-based tribe lease property along the Rappahannock River. They’ve been able to build their museum and cultural center there.

Such arrangements aren’t necessarily safe, though.

Just in the last year, the county abruptly revoked, then reapproved, a smaller lease along the Potomac River. At issue was an ugly disagreement over the tribe’s legitimacy. Backed by College of William and Mary experts on Native Americans, the Patawomeck tribe received official recognition from the General Assembly in 2010. Such recognition allows, for example, tribal members to hunt the land and fish the waterways without a state license. Yet a handful of locals argued effectively — if unpersuasively — that the tribe simply doesn’t exist.

What does this mean?

The Native tribe after whom the English named the Potomac River still lacks a secure foothold on the place of their ancestors. That’s because the state sees the Patawomeck as part of the natural order — but not every local does.

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At heart, No Lines in Nature tries to draw broader insight into our relationship with nature through the close observation of our local environment, especially Potomac Creek, where I was raised.

In this spirit, I’m publishing here an essay from Sarah Balon. I met Sarah not long ago for coffee, since we both work to promote awareness of local environmental issues. I was impressed by her sincerity and determination. Sarah recently graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a degree in Environmental Science. She is an avid volunteer who received the Environmental Guardian Award this year from the JF Environmental Trust Foundation for her volunteer work. She is also the Water Quality Monitor Lead for Waterway Cleanups.

Today, Sarah informed me that she and a colleague discovered sewage leaking into Accokeek Creek. I have written before about the general poor health of our local waterways. Accokeek Creek runs through Stafford County, ultimately feeding Potomac Creek (which touches our family farm) at the 3,000-acre Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve. The waters of both creeks then flow into the Potomac River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.

Sarah felt there is an urgent need to alert the public and monitor the situation. I agree. This is especially so now, since it is high summertime and many people are recreating in these waters, swimming, boating, and fishing (I wouldn’t recommend eating the fish). People need to know if the water is safe.

People can make choices. But, of course, when it’s unsafe, the fauna and flora that depend on these waters are simply out of luck. I hope to co—author an article soon on recent incidents of untreated wastewater spilling into local rivers and creeks in our area — some so disastrous they’ve received national attention. Both of our region’s rivers, the Potomac and Rappahannock, have paid an especially steep price in 2026.

As always, thanks for your support. Sarah’s article follows below.

Ranjit

Fracture in Sewage Pipe Pours Untreated Wastewater into Accokeek Creek

By Sarah Balon

On July 21st, Jesse Adams, founder of Waterway Cleanups, was walking the trails in Stafford County’s Civil War Park when he noticed that Accokeek Creek was discolored and had an awful stench. He notified me, and the next day he met with county staff to discuss his concerns in person.

While conversing with the County’s Environmental Compliance Manager, Jesse learned that the Civil War Park is directly below a small sewage treatment plant on the tail end of the Potomac Church Farms neighborhood. Shortly after, Jesse and I arrived in Stafford Civil War Park to perform an E. coli test.

Stafford County’s field operations and environmental team were already there when we arrived at the park. County staff reported that they saw no evidence of contamination and left with a water sample. Jesse and I conducted our own test in Accokeek Creek downstream of the Civil War Park’s parking lot. Accokeek Creek is fed by small tributaries in the general vicinity.

We then spent about an hour and a half walking upstream, periodically stopping to smell the water to try and find where the smell starts. We walked all the way to where you can see the small sewage plant from the creek. We decided we couldn’t smell anything, and retraced our steps. The sewage smell started directly where the tributary to the right of the Potomac Church Farms neighborhood meets Accokeek.

After surveying the tributary in proximity to the sewage plant, we went upstream and ventured onto an access road below “The Residences at Potomac” apartment complex. The sewage line is located on this access road running parallel to the tributary.

We found the break in the sewage line at coordinates 38.404247, -77.404523 pictured above. We notified County staff immediately at 4:40PM; they arrived at 5PM to remediate the site and fix the pipe. County staff then filed a report to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), report #324546, and hung up fliers to warn the public of contamination the following day, July 23rd.

You can see (and hear) the pipe break in this video that I took onsite:

Our E. coli test taken inside of Civil War Park had a concentration of 700 CFU/100mL. The standard for E. coli in tributaries of the Potomac River is 235 CFU/100mL for a single sample. In other words, the amount of E. coli detected was almost three times the standard. The fracture in the sewage pipe was 18 inches long. It most likely leaked gradually over an extended period of time before reaching that size.

On July 23rd, we conducted an additional test at the popular Crow’s Nest’s Natural Area Preserve Canoe Launch, downstream of the Civil War Park. This test came up clean; it appears as though the wetlands are helping to filter the creek downstream. (One of the many reasons wetlands are so valuable and should be preserved.) It is advised that you refrain from swimming and bringing pets to Accokeek Creek until further notice.

***

We should note that the remediation protocol would not have been carried out so quickly without back and forth communication with County Board of Supervisor members and County staff. As we continue the fight for clean water and healthy habitat, please remember to engage with officials and the non-profits that cover your branch of a waterway.

We also have to acknowledge that the new Potomac Church Tech Center borders the apartment complex near the pipe break.

This 50-acre data center complex went in front of the Board of Supervisors on June 16th to ask for a proffer amendment. A “proffer” is a voluntary offer made by a property owner or developer to offset the impacts of a new building project. This amendment would allow the developer (Amazon Data Services of Seattle Washington) to start constructing their second building before a “re-use” water system is built.

“Re-use” water, aka “reclaimed water,” is water that is repurposed after being sent to a wastewater treatment plant. Data centers can use this water to cool their servers. This means that the water sent from our homes, public facilities, and industries to a wastewater treatment plant is clarified and then pumped to a data center for cooling purposes. It is beneficial in the sense that it does not add immediate strain on our drinking water supply. However, it does stress ecosystems because the water is not returned back to the environment where it would replenish our rivers and streams.

The re-use system for the Potomac Church data centers will not be finished until September 2028. The original agreement, however, stipulated that the second building of the data center campus cannot be constructed until the re-use system is built, that potable water will not be supplied to cool the second building, and that the re-use system would be finished by 2027.

The decision on whether to amend the proffers was deferred to August 18th.

Until then, when online and before the re-use system is operational, the first building can legally use 217,000 gallons of potable water per day for the first two years of its operation.

It is vital that we understand the limits of our wastewater treatment infrastructure before we accept more water extensive uses into the county.

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This video was made July 22nd at the site where the sewer line failed, untreated wastewater is seen rushing out of

the ground and flowing downhill to Accokeek’s tributary

Soil is life. It is a living ecosystem, full of organic matter like microorganisms and fungi as well as water and air. Soil’s many i…

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“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Marx (Groucho)

By now, it seems everyone knows about the spotted lantern fly. Here are a few I photographed on a tree last fall.

Like its favorite host, the tree of heaven, the spotted lantern fly arrived from Asia. It’s rapidly become a highly prolific invasive species in the US. The firs…

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Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

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Despite appearances, it isn’t always easy being a magazine’s “Environmental Columnist.”

Yes, there are the obvious perks: invitations to exclusive parties, fancy clothes “comped” by famous designers, never having to pick up a bar tab, etc. But the p…

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This method works especially well with nonfiction, where keeping the plot isn’t always as crucial to one’s enjoyment as it might be for a tightl…

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I am delighted to present this guest post by Jeff Eastland. Jeff is a fellow long-term resident of Stafford County, Virginia. His environmental work seeks to protect places like Potomac Creek, the besieged body of water that inspires No Lines in Nature and my own nature writing and activism.

I met Jeff not long ago when…

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Now, it’s just unbelievable to me that the local weather journalists I’ve seen won’t publicly attribute this punishing drought and heat — today’s hig…

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For those unfamiliar with our area, swatches of forest disappear in Stafford County, Virginia every day. I’ve written about this before, including how disorienting the rapid destruction can be to many residents. Bulldozers clear away all vegetation and even the soil underneath, leaving the yellow earth scarred and infertile. Few places seem immune. Just a few years after my wife and I bought our house, the entire forest backing our lot was removed, leaving us atop a windy hill.

Last week, a nearby copse of trees that I’ve admired for decades was unceremoniously scraped away for new homes starting “In the mid-500s.” In the abstract I have long known these trees were vulnerable, surrounded by older houses. But the act itself came as a shock. Especially since this is still early summer and therefore the height of the nesting season. The trees’ sudden erasure sent me back to an ancient puzzle:

What are my kindred members of humanity thinking?

***

A scene from two years ago:

My smartphone vibrates.

A local developer wants to build a village-style retirement community of 141 new homes on Leeland Road. The road runs a mile or so up Potomac Creek from Unicorn Farm, our family home. This proposed subdivision would destroy the 53-acre Clift Farm, currently a graceful expanse of rolling fields touching the old 173-acre farm of Jean Ewalt, a wildlife rehabilitator, and her husband Edgar, both of whom have passed away. These were people I had known.

To build the retirement community, the developer needs Stafford County to re-zone the farmland from A-1 Agricultural to a new designation: R-2 Urban Medium Density Housing. An online petition opposing the change has been created by local residents. Petitioners decry the loss of open space and green vistas that attracted them here, and worry about the traffic that will come. Others speak of the Clift Farm’s notable history; the entire area was a Union Army campsite during the Civil War, and Stoneman’s Switch, a strategic railroad junction, ran just alongside. Abraham Lincoln walked here.

For the most part, the opposition to the retirement community is a classic case of NIMBY politics – Not in My Back Yard. Most petitioners arrived here less than twenty years ago. They occupy newly built, two-story “McMansion” houses, parking their commuter cars along white curbs in the cul-de-sacs where a walnut orchard once stood.

I feel for them, though. Not in my backyard, either. When the petition leader calls me for support, I give him what ammo I have – an online article I wrote on how such housing projects are hurting the water quality of Potomac Creek, which lies within about 1,000 feet of the proposed community – and agree to speak at an upcoming county planning meeting.

A few weeks later, I chat about the coming development with my anthropologist friend Brad, an active citizen of the local Patawomeck tribe. Brad has just finished discussing Indigenous rights with students in my undergraduate seminar. (Afterward, a confused student asks me if Brad is Canadian. His broad waterman’s accent – “about” is “abowt” – is rarely heard these days.)

Brad agrees that the retirement community won’t be stopped. That’s not the Stafford County way. Like me, he worries about the housing development’s impact on the creek, which runs through the heart of his tribe’s ancestral homelands. Increased lawn fertilizers and road run-off will further harm water quality. Brad knows, too, that only minimal cultural resource surveying has been done. He suspects buried sites of historic tribal settlements will be destroyed and associated artifacts lost forever. He informs me of a massive new warehouse, further up Potomac Creek across Route 1, that is also in the planning stages. There, evidence of human settlement has been found (including tell-tale fluted Clovis points) dating back to the earliest Paleoindian era, ten thousand years ago or more. Building the new retirement community may well erase any record of uncounted humans who once lived beside the creek.1

Trees and animals will die. Most people won’t notice. But why are we okay with the erasure of our own kind, I wonder? Especially here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which prides itself as “the birthplace of the nation” and “mother of presidents?” As the country prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, Virginia’s clever new marketing campaign can credibly boast: “America. Made in Virginia.”

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When considering the wounded land around Potomac Creek, I often struggle to understand the minds of others. It’s a global concern capable of uniting (and occasionally unifying) the social and natural sciences.

Personally, I once tried to glean the thoughts of a visiting migratory bird through science and sheer imagination. I read a number of peer-reviewed studies about the migratory impulse. I cannot say that I succeeded with any confidence. My working assumption was that interiority is, by definition, hidden, but also universal – or something like that.

Then, last summer, standing quiet in the woods, I watched a red-headed woodpecker feed in the bark of a tree several feet over my head. We both paused to exchange glances.

The bird saw me and wondered something, as did I. A moment of mutual regard; I felt illumined, and a little bit startled.

I knew for that instant what it was thinking about: it was thinking about me. A modest but solid insight. Then, as the bird continued its feeding with only a hop or two sideways, I knew, too, that the woodpecker thought rather little of me, despite my species’ awesome supremacy. But I could only make guesses why.

Maybe we shouldn’t mirror-image across species. Assuming a muskrat or owl must think as we do; how immodest is that? Perhaps my whole approach has been wrong. Of course we’re all creatures of nature, fated to act like the animals we are. But differences among species must matter, too, even in an instant of mutual recognition.

Such doubts keep my ongoing book project in flux.

Returning my attention to those of my own species, though, I felt the task of discovery has to be easier.

How do humans understand the land they live on? Well, dead people leave records and material artifacts or write books. Ideas and emotions have archaeologies for us to unpack. An uncovered cache of worn Clovis points clearly says someone viewed this as a good place to find food. A bone flute bespeaks rituals or play. Empathy isn’t such an abstraction here amongst our own; less brute imagination is needed to understand what the dead were thinking. Living humans, too, may tell you directly and in your own language how they feel about a place, as well as about those who came before us.

But, as I had hoped with the birds, you need first to become a stalker of people. Approach quietly. Heighten your senses. Follow them around, perhaps.

The person who pays for the vanquishing bulldozer and the environmentalist who mourns what is to be forever lost; here, too, amongst ourselves, we must seek illuminating moments of mutual regard. Perhaps then we can fathom how the other views the land.

But, for the moment at least, I remain mystified by why we hold such views.

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I’m over the moon today because I get to present the inaugural post of No Lines in Nature’s first guest contributor: Tucker Caldwell!

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***

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***

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