Seattle has some of the purest drinking water in the nation. Do you know where it comes from?
[00:00:03] Christie Robertson: Most of us turn on the tap without a second thought about where the water starts. Staff at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center talk about water every day. Let’s listen to Enovi Chandler
[00:00:14] Enovi Chandler: I work at Seattle Public Utilities as a senior public and cultural specialist at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center. My role here is to teach people of all ages about the significance of their drinking water so they have the knowledge and also understand the voice that they have here.
[00:00:35] Christie Robertson: I went to the Cedar River Trail in Landsburg Park to listen to the sound of the Cedar River downstream of the Cedar River Watershed. The watershed itself is protected to keep our drinking water clean. For security purposes, watershed access is restricted to Seattle Public Utilities staff and permitted persons.
The Equitable Engagement Tours are an evolving partnership between the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and Seattle Public Utilities, connecting community members to the watershed to learn where their drinking water comes from.
This year, nine community groups visited the watershed, 164 people in all. Two of them lent their voices to this audio story – members of Villa Comunitaria and seniors from the Filipino Community of Seattle.
We asked the participants, “What does water mean to you?” Khatsini, Equity and Engagement Advisor from the Department of Neighborhoods, says that question is the heart of the tours.
We invite people to share not just their questions about water, but what it means to them. Water is more than a resource or something to be managed. We’re bringing people not with the assumption that there’s a lack of knowledge, but that everybody has something to learn together. And in that way, every tour is a unique experience. Jorge of Villa Comunitaria helped organize the tour and did outreach for it.
[00:02:20] Jorge: Water? Water is life. it’s… We’re made of, like, what? Eighty, ninety percent of water. Mm-hmm.
Water is literally everything. Yeah. And to a community, it’s, watering your plants. It’s staying hydrated. Water’s everything.
[00:02:34] Sebas: Um, animals, plants, humans, we all need water to be able to live, so to me water means life.
[00:02:43] Christie Robertson: Again and again, people on the tour tied water to health, to family, and to community.
[00:02:49] Participant 3: I think for me, and not just my community, but, like, a ton of communities, we all kind of depend on water to be able to live a long, healthy life.
[00:03:01] Enovi Chandler: Mmmm.
[00:03:01] Participant 3: So it’s really important to have access to clean water.
[00:03:05] Diana H: Previously, I had not that much deep notion. I just had the thought of the water comes, going to the mountains, the mountains falls into the rivers, and then somehow magically appears in my sink.
[00:03:18] Eduardo: So in the past, I’ve been to Volunteer Park, the reservoir there. I know there’s one in Discovery Park. I thought those were the places where the water is coming from. I did not know it was a big lake like that.
[00:03:30] Christie Robertson: Diego Rojas, a public education program specialist at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, interpreted.
[00:03:37] Gladis: No podríamos vivir sin ella. Bueno, soy de la comunidad latina y pienso que es muy importante para ellos.
[00:03:46] Diego Rojas: Water means life to me as well as, for my community, especially the Latin community.
[00:03:52] Gladis: Para ellos significa limpieza, vida, um, un ciclo.
[00:03:59] Diego Rojas: It means life and the life cycle as well as cleanliness.
[00:04:05] Christie Robertson: Enovi leads these groups through the watershed.
[00:04:09] Enovi Chandler: Seattle owns two watersheds and about 70% of our drinking water comes from the Cedar River Watershed in North Bend. And just north of there is the Tolt River Watershed, which provides about 30% of our drinking water. And these two areas of land are twice the size of Seattle, serving one point six million people in Seattle, but also surrounding cities like in the north and south.
And we work with the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe to manage the Cedar River Watershed. Oftentimes, they are making sure that we are releasing enough water flow for our salmon during their journey, and they also come into the watershed to forage or to hunt.
[00:05:08] Anthony: There was one thing that our tour said that it takes, I think, about two to three weeks for the water to even get to our tap.
[00:05:14] Christie Robertson: Most Seattleites never see where their water begins. The watershed is a long way from most Seattle neighborhoods. Partnerships between organizations, departments, and people help open doors.
[00:05:29] Khatsini: The Equitable Engagement Tours program aims to make the Cedar River Watershed available for communities that otherwise would have difficult time accessing the space and also to ensure that the people learning about the source of our drinking water reflect the diversity of the city. We think about language access. So interpreters, translators, thinking about how information can be shared in ways that are culturally relevant. We also think about physical access. So whether somebody needs mobility assistance or a wheelchair-accessible bus, having access to transportation helps alleviate that physical barrier as well.
[00:06:19] Christie Robertson: As we arrive at the Cedar River Watershed Education Center, we hear the Rain Drum Courtyard, an art installation by Dan Corson, where falling water plays 17 drums. Belinda Chin manages education at the watershed.
[00:06:35] Belinda Chin: The partnership with the corporate policy unit at Seattle Public Utilities is so important. They are the ones who built up the relationship with the Department of Neighborhoods in 2023.
If Seattle Parks and Recreation is the lungs of the city, and SPU is the liver and kidneys, then the Department of Neighborhoods is the heart of the city departments, ’cause they’re right there with people. They’re listening, right? And they’re taking action.
[00:07:15] Christie Robertson: The watershed sits in the foothills of the Cascades and is home to eighty-two species of fish and wildlife, and the forest itself is part of the water system.
[00:07:25] Belinda Chin: The way I like to describe my job is to help people fall in love with the source of their drinking water. You are surrounded by a beautiful wooded natural setting. And those woods help make healthy soil, and those healthy soils help filter great water, and that great water helps us as a city population to be healthy.
[00:07:54] Christie Robertson: The story of this land goes back much further than Seattle itself.
[00:07:57] Enovi Chandler: So we have data and evidence showing that Native people have been here on this land for about at least dating up to ten thousand years ago. And as Native people always say, their ancestors have been here on this land since time immemorial. And just to name a few are the Yakima, Wenatchee, now part of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, the Duwamish, the Suquamish, the Tulalip, and Snoqualmie Tribes. And it’s likely there are even more tribes that have lived here and are not federally recognized.
[00:08:42] Christie Robertson: Seattle’s connection to the water goes back more than a century, to the Great Seattle Fire.
[00:08:51] Belinda Chin: We are very, very fortunate as a legacy to us from a much earlier time the City of Seattle Council and mayor, after the Great Fire of 1889, they went in search of another significant fresh water supply.
[00:09:16] Enovi Chandler: People were getting sick from the nearby lakes because of our waste that was polluting the water and the factories as well that were polluting. So the citizens of Seattle, they voted for safer and cleaner drinking water.
[00:09:33] Belinda Chin: It is one of the few unfiltered water supply systems left in the United States.
[00:09:44] Enovi Chandler: And it did take a long time, over the course of 100 years, but today Seattle Public Utilities owns 90-plus thousand acres of land to protect the quality of the drinking water.
[00:10:01] Christie Robertson: Narlyn Abenojar, who leads senior outreach at the Filipino Community of Seattle, helped organize the tour and do outreach for it.
[00:10:09] Narlyn Abenojar: What I noticed with the tour – the water is the best here. And I love that we don’t need to filter water.
[00:10:19] Christie Robertson: For a lot of people on the tour, the biggest surprise was a number. Less than 1% of the water on Earth is fresh water that we can actually use.
Anna Moya is a community liaison, another partner in engaging the community connected to this program through the Department of Neighborhoods. Community liaisons support outreach planning and community engagement in partnership with departments across the city.
[00:10:45] Anna Moya: And to realize how little we have, that 1%, it, it just makes it more valuable. And I think that is the statement of this tour – letting people understand where we’ve been, where we are, and what could be done.
[00:11:13] Christie Robertson: This forest has kept Seattle’s water clean. The Equitable Engagement Tours partnership between the Department of Neighborhoods and Seattle Public Utilities makes sure more of the people who drink that water get to see where it begins
[00:11:27] Khatsini: We definitely don’t want this to be just a one-time thing. We wanna build ongoing and deep relationships.
[00:11:37] Christie Robertson: Special thanks to the members of Villa Comunitaria and the Filipino Community of Seattle including Anthony, Gladis, Diana H., Sebas, and Eduardo, for sharing their voices for this story.
This is an audio story produced by Christie Robertson and Jasmine Pulido, with funding by the Department of Neighborhoods for Community Storytelling to share the unique experiences of Seattle residents, to uplift the people and organizations doing this work in their own neighborhoods and in communities across Seattle.
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