opinion

When these big lakes are still – do you remember, when you were small, they filled a glass of water full for you, and then put on one more drop, so that the water stood up over the edge of the glass? These lakes seem overfull of beauty, like that, and sometimes I can hardly bear it. – Florence Page Jaques, 1927.

Water flows through everything Minnesotan: landscapes, lifestyles, history, humor, politics, art, literature, commerce -- culture. Our souls, some would say.

People born here take plentiful lakes and streams as a birthright, and they quickly become the equivalent for immigrants like Mrs. Jaques, an Illinois-born New Yorker who married, in her late 30s, an Aitkin man who would become Sigurd Olson's illustrator. Within months, the newlyweds were off on a three-week canoe trip near the Canadian border. Her travel journal records an overnight conversion experienced by countless newcomers from places less blessed with water, which is most places.

Water images are prominent in the state seal and state song, and it was no surprise when Minnesota's commemorative quarter was struck with a fishing boat and lake-dwelling loon on the reverse. Blue waterscapes are home not only to the state bird but also the state grain (wild rice) and state gemstone (Lake Superior agate). Water is essential to an economy so reliant on tourism, timber, agriculture and myriad recreational pursuits. The Minnesota town that has no lake or river is considered an unfortunate rarity.

Why, then, do we treat this resource so shabbily?

Perhaps precisely because, as Florence Jaques observed, our cup seems so perpetually overfull. Also because water's resilience is easy to overestimate: A lake in serious decline can still look pretty good from the road. Also because we learn as schoolchildren that all the water ever present on the earth is here still, cycling as arrows of evaporation and rain. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot.

One simple measure: When the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency tests a lake or stream against federal water-quality standards -- and these fall well short of pristine -- the odds are nearly even that it will flunk. Virtually every lake in the state carries a warning against eating too much mercury-tainted fish, and each summer a few more beaches are closed to swimming.

In Africa, where droughts are common and lakes are rare, schoolchildren learn a proverb: You can't wash dirty water.

Pollutants from cities and industries kill the fish in our streams. Many waterways are covered with oil slicks and contain growths of algae that destroy productive life and make the water unfit for recreation. ... A lake that has served many generations of men now can be destroyed by man in less than one generation.

President Lyndon Johnson in a special message to Congress, 1968.

In some places, in some ways, water quality has greatly improved during 30-some years of effort driven by federal law. The Mississippi River, especially, and many other large streams and lakes are notably cleaner because industrial and sewage discharges have declined dramatically. But this visible progress makes it too easy to overlook what's gotten worse.

Agricultural runoff is now the single biggest pollution source, and the problem is growing for two main reasons: First, the bad stuff doesn't come out of a pipe, so it's harder to pinpoint; second, farming has always enjoyed broad exemption from the regulatory regimes applied to other industries. It's illegal for a soybean grower to pour a pint of leftover pesticide into a creek, but to let gallons of it wash into the creek with the rain -- or to flush it through drain tile -- is OK.

Indeed, farm policies firmly encourage more production and, therefore, more runoff of pesticides, fertilizers and silt. After degrading local lakes and streams, these pollutants make their way to the "Dead Zone," a vast portion of the Gulf of Mexico where there is too little oxygen for much of anything to live. It has been calculated that our Minnesota River -- draining one-third of the state, and a prime focus of voluntary runoff-reduction efforts -- contributes 6 to 8 percent of the Dead Zone's nitrates load, all on its own.

Another way of looking at agricultural pollution in the Minnesota River is to get close to its waters -- say, in a boat. A few summers back I paddled a kayak upstream from the Minnesota's confluence with the Mississippi. I saw many dead, bloated fish but few birds until I beached for lunch and admired four soaring eagles, which, coming closer, turned out to be buzzards. The river reeked.

It also stinks in the middle of winter, as I found one February morning, paddling past the same confluence. Thick ice sheets were beginning to break up, and the water flowing out from underneath carried fecal-looking blobs. Can't say for sure what they were, but I have paddled amid unmistakable poop in the channel between Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, in the heart of Minneapolis, in waters that are the city's leading icon and point of pride.

My lake is my backyard, it has always been there for me, and always will be. The ducks and the fish, the plants, all are perfectly intertwined; all are at peace with themselves. I can find peace in these waters, every stress and pressure of life melts away as I coast aimlessly about. I am two minutes from my house, but I am a million miles to sea.

Jeff Hughes of Andover High School, in a winning essay for a contest sponsored last year by the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.