By the Johnson County Museum
The Johnson County Museum’s newest special exhibit, “Ripples: Water, Community, and You,” opens this weekend! The immersive exhibit delves into the history of natural and human-made water systems in our area. For centuries, humans have depended on water for health, trade, transportation, development, farming, recreation – for life itself. Read on to learn more about why the museum created this exhibit, and how water, community, and you are interrelated through the ripples each makes! [image 1]
Why water?
Over the past 180 million years, Kansas has been everything from an inland sea to the Great American Desert. Today our landscape is shaped by an interconnected and interdependent network of streams, rivers, and watersheds, with an entire built environment to manage and leverage water for human use. You may not know much about that second part – the human-made system for water and wastewater. It is literally buried beneath our feet.
Built on a year of research, the exhibit reveals how every human interaction with water – past and present, personal and professional, residential and industrial, intentional and unintentional – makes a ripple. Each ripple, whether positive or negative, changes both water and human lives for generations to come. Today we live with the ripples of past decisions and actions taken regarding water, past instances when water’s force changed the course of human events, all while continuing to create ripples of our own.
The exhibit examines the history of such ripples through three mindsets that have driven humans. First, the idea that water controls humans. For thousands of years, water was an unstoppable force and humans had to seek it out, ride its currents, and hide from its torrents. Second, humans have tried to control water. Over the past century and a half, engineers, planners, builders, scientists, activists, and legislators tried to control how and where water flows, and even the direction that water flows. Third, a new way forward is emerging, one that recognizes that, for the way humans currently live, the past mindsets are not sustainable. And it all has to do with water, community, and you.
Unpacking water
For millennia, water flowed constrained only by the natural landscape around it. Floods and droughts were unpredictable and uncontrollable forces. Humans had to react to water: to run from flood waters or seek out water sources. Natural disasters left ripples in the public memory that informed humans’ approach to water.
Take the Missouri River for example. Nearly every spring, rains and melting snow cause the river to rise, to jump its usual banks, and expand onto its floodplain. When humans built their cities along the Missouri’s banks, these seasonal floods wreaked havoc. Buildings, boats, livestock, and people were swept away by the torrents. Railroads and farms were inundated. Damage was done, investments were lost, and lives were destroyed. The 1903 and the 1951 Missouri River floods are two catastrophic examples that created ripples still felt today. These events informed water policies, plans to engineer the river, and even how society thinks about rivers today.
Community control
You turn on the faucet and water runs out. You flush the toilet and waste disappears. You turn on the garden hose (or sprinkler system) and an artificial rain falls. Water is always there when we need it, right? This was not always the case. It took human intervention, the construction of systems, and the setting of policy to make water work for humans.
Take Johnson County for example. The area’s journey to a modern water system began in 1917 with a small water supply company. It supplied water purchased from Kansas City’s system to local residents in the emerging pre-war suburbs. Prior to that system, farmers in the area would have relied on streams and wells for their water. As the company grew, it acquired other smaller water supply companies. But poor service and high costs led Johnson Countians to vote in favor of purchasing the company in 1957 and transforming it into the nonprofit public utility that supplies water to much of Johnson County today, WaterOne.
Likewise, the county’s wastewater system developed out of community necessity. For over a century after its founding in 1855, Johnson Countians used outhouses and privies for their waste and emptied their wastewater and trash into nearby waterways (with major public health implications). In the early part of the 20th century, suburban developers installed septic systems in their communities – each home connected to its own sewage disposal system. But this too had negative implications – nearly one in three septic systems failed within three years of installation in the postwar era. In 1949, Johnson County Wastewater established its first treatment facility and the county soon adopted a unified sewage system approach to new development. Continued investment in this system has led to award-winning treatment facilities and processes.
Your role – and ripple
So where do you come in? Each person makes ripples regarding water every day – often without realizing it. Turning off the water while brushing your teeth; running only full loads of laundry and dishes; avoiding pouring fats, oils, and grease (FOG) down the drain; cleaning lawn clippings and fertilizer pellets out of the roadside gutter are all small decisions that can create positive ripples.
But we make negative water ripples: not using reusable water bottles, running lawn sprinklers after it rains, or flushing non-flushable products. These choices hurt both natural and manmade water systems. When compounded by hundreds of thousands of residents, they present real challenges to a sustainable water future.
As we face historic droughts and floods, the drying of regional aquifers once filled with ancient waters, pollution affecting watersheds and ecosystems, and the transformation of waterways and arid landscapes alike to suit human needs, it is essential to reflect on the ripples still reverberating from the past. By doing so, we can learn from them. Every decision – whether in water management or usage, legislation or industrial practice, conservation or personal choice – affects us all. The exhibit starts and ends with an important question for visitors to consider: what ripples will you make?
How to visit and learn more
The museum’s special exhibit, “Ripples: Water Community, and You,” opens Saturday, Feb. 8. It is included in regular museum admission and is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. There will be a robust series of public programming, events, and opportunities in conjunction with the exhibit.
“Ripples” is supported through generous sponsorships from Black & Veatch, Burns & McDonnell, HDR, The Parks & Recreation Foundation of Johnson County, and TREKK Design Group. Their commitment to this exhibit helps bring to life the important story of water in our region, and their partnership ensures the Johnson County Museum can continue offering engaging and educational experiences to our community.
Plan your visit and learn more by visiting JCPRD.com/Ripples.
