KY Poet Laureate Silas House: ‘We all know that water is holy.’ SB 89 will hurt us | Opinion

Water is our most precious natural resource.

I am a lifelong Kentuckian and growing up, I spent a lot of my time on Laurel Lake and Dale Hollow Lake, on the Cumberland and Rockcastle Rivers. We swam, fished, skied, and went for boat-rides. As children, we’d spend entire summer days wading in our creeks. We built little dams and bridges, hunted crawdads and seined for minnows, then used them to fish in ponds. Many of us have been baptized in these waters. Our lakes, rivers, creeks, and springs are part of who we are as a people, literally and figuratively. And we all drink water every day. We all know that water is holy.

Proponents of SB 89 say that it is meant to only allow them to pollute ephemeral streams — the ones that don’t run year round. That isn’t true: this bill would allow them to pollute any waterway because our creeks and rivers, no matter how small, are all connected. We all live downstream. Ask yourself: why would we want to pollute any stream? Those “ephemeral streams” matter, too. They go into our groundwater and our drinking water. When polluted with toxic chemicals, they will jeopardize the health of everyone.

I want to be clear: this bill would make it legal to discharge pollutants, contaminants, sewage, and more hazardous substances into our groundwater, into the upper reaches of our streams and river systems, and into our drinking water. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to vote for a bill that is going to put pollution in the drinking water of our children, of our babies.

We’ve all seen the heartbreaking devastation caused by flooding in our state. Eastern Kentucky was just hit again. The death toll now stands at 24. Homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. Passage of SB 89 could make this flooding even more frequent and much harder to clean up, with the addition of more toxic pollutants in our water.

Who would vote in favor of such a bill? Only those who are concerned first and foremost about money: for big corporations, for big executives, for campaign donations. I hope everyone will watch closely who votes for SB 89 and will remember them on election day. These politicians who support SB 89 are voting for corporations to have more rights than individuals do.

Economy and the environment can co-exist. And it’s far past time for us to stop giving some industries a free pass on regulation that harm other forms of economy by passing such bills. In 2024 Kentucky tourism led to about $256 million dollars in economic investment and created nearly 1,700 jobs. The toxic waste dumped into our streams will eventually go over the mighty Cumberland Falls and collect in the peaceful coves of Kentucky Lake. Tremendous revenue is generated every year from hunting, fishing, and boating, all which will be endangered by the passage of this bill. We cannot sacrifice all of that to allow companies to pollute even more than they already do. I was raised working class and I stand with working class people, who will be the ones most affected by the passage of SB 89. Anyone who votes for it is voting against them.

Back when I was a little boy growing up in Eastern Kentucky I learned about the concept of the Commons. This is an ethical code that refers to shared resources, most often water and air, elements that are accessible to all of us and that the culture has collectively agreed to protect. It’s an ethical code. It is unethical to harm our water and passage of Senate bill 89 will endanger all of us.

I ask our representatives to protect the people of the Commonwealth and the water that our children use for drinking, for fishing and swimming, that we use for our crops and livestock, and that must be clean for us to survive. I ask them to protect the lakes, rivers, creeks and fonts where many people make their public declarations of faith to get baptized. I ask our representatives to protect us instead of those looking to profit by more freely polluting our water.

Because we all know that water is life. Water is our most precious natural resource and we must protect it at all costs.

Silas House is Poet Laureate of Kentucky and a best-selling novelist, most recently of “Lark Ascending.”

This story was originally published March 6, 2025 at 10:07 AM.