'We All Live Upstream' Sun, Jun 8, 2003 Eureka Springs Woman an Advocate for Clean Water By Bettina Lehovec The Morning News blehovec@nwaonline.net Water. Most Americans take this basic need for granted, assuming all they want will be available at the turn of a tap. Eureka Springs resident Barbara Harmony thinks differently. She knows clean water is a finite resource, one that is dwindling as pollution and world population swells. The longtime environmentalist has dedicated her life to water -- to helping people recognize the responsibility they share in preserving the precious substance. "We all live upstream," Harmony wrote in the forward to the revised environmental classic "We All Live Downstream." The book was first published in1986by The National Water Center, a Eureka Springs-based organization she helped start. Harmony traveled to Kyoto, Japan, in March for the 3rd World Water Forum. She joined 24,000 people from 182 countries at the conference, which addressed how to bring safe drinking water and sanitation to people around the globe. Harmony and traveling companion Hopi spokeswoman Marilyn Harris Tewa joined the Indigenous Peoples Forum to study ways water and culture are interrelated and how to safeguard traditional water supplies while respecting tribal ways."The indigenous perspective is that water is essential to life," said Harmony, who has made that simple fact the touchstone of her 60 years. The corporate perspective views water as a commodity, she explained, something to be traded or sold for profit. The privatization of water -- a growing practice in many cash-poor countries such as India -- depletes water supplies from rural farmers who need it so that multi-national corporations can profit. A hydro-electric dam in New Delhi, India, drains three counties of their water supply, for example. Damming the Ganges River has caused Bangladesh to suffer seasonal droughts and floods. "It's one story after another," Harmony said sadly. Dedicated to Change Harmony founded The National Water Center in 1979to advocate against a sewage treatment plant proposed for the creek below Lake Leatherwood Dam in Eureka Springs. She had plenty of experience in community activism, working as a health and education organizer and against racism, nuclear power and the Vietnam War. She picketed the Woolworth's lunch counter in her native New Jersey to protest racial segregation in the South when she was a high school student in 1959. Two years later, she presented Martin Luther King Jr. with $1,000 she had raised.She was a member of civil rights group Project Understanding and A Committee For A Sane Nuclear Policy around the same time. "I never thought things were satisfactory," she said, contemplating the factors that led her into community activism. In her parents' words, she had "a streak" that wouldn't allow her to ignore social issues and settle complacently down. The proposed sewage treatment plant was defeated. Harmony decided to keep the center going as a way to spread information about environmentally low-impact alternatives such as composting toilets. She and co-founderJacqueline Froelich published a quarterly journal and another book: "Aqua Terra: MetaEcology & Culture."A current Water Center project, One Clean Spring, aims to reconstitute one of the city's 66 springs, returning it to a pristine and free-flowing state. The changes needed to purify Magnetic Spring, on what is commonly called Passion Play Road, must come largely from private landowners upstream from the spring, Harmony said. If homeowners adapt their landscaping techniques to slow the flow of rainwater, run-off and erosion will turn into water absorption. Such simple solutions are attainable if enough people shift their awareness enough to recognize the need, Harmony said. This approach appears to be the basis of her work: Changing the world doesn't have to be complicated. Everyone can play a part, one small decision at a time. Susan Lourne, director of the Eureka Springs Parks & Recreation Department, works with Harmony on the One Clean Spring project. They also teamed on a water quality workshop in February, hosted by the Community Development Partnership of Western Carroll County, The National Water Center and several other organizations. Lourne said Harmony brings an acceptance of others to her community work that builds bridges, not walls. "At the risk of sounding corny, she brings harmony," Lourne said. "Her modus operandi is very organic. What you get is this lovely movement toward the goal without any of the charged dynamics that often occur (in community activism.) "It's an unusual gift. She's accepted in turn. Barbara is very much loved in her community." Harmony, a gentle, soft-spoken woman with a generous laugh, is also known for her other interests, which include astrology and Re-evaluation Counseling. Harmony has taught the peer-counseling technique since 1990 and has been an astrologer for 35 years.She has traveled extensively, many of her trips paid for by sponsors who wish to remain anonymous. "They believe in what I do," Harmony said simply. She was a delegate to the International Women's' Conference in Beijing in 1995, the International Feng Shui Conference in Prague in 1998 and a Feng Shui workshop in Sweden in 1999. She gave a talk on water ecology at the1994 American Society of Landscape Architects Convention in San Antonio, Texas,and participated in the first International Women's' Leadership Conference at Harvard in 1997. She attended the Global Assembly of Women and the Environment in Miami in 1993 and started the Eco-Feminist Task Force of the National Women's Studies Association in the 1980s. Other countries visited include Israel, India, Bolivia and Peru. Harmony's involvement with the 1980s Bioregional movement, which builds coalitions based on geographical regions rather than political boundaries, has led her to conferences in British Columbia, Mexico, Texas and Kentucky. Harmony is a member of the Ozark Area Community Congress, the Continental Bioregional Congress and the Green Party, formerly the Greens Coordinating Council. Purposeful Simplicity Harmony adopted her philosophy of "purposeful simplicity" in 1974. She was working for the city of Hoboken, N.J., and grew tired of the urban sprawl. "I didn't want to leave the house because I didn't want to give up my parking space," she said with a laugh. She packed what belongings would fit into a Volkswagen convertible and drove southwest, searching for a simpler way of life. A friend's wedding brought her to Northwest Arkansas, where Harmony remained. She lives in a small house north of Eureka Springs that she and her former husband rebuilt in 1978. There Harmony raised her son, Ben Hovland, now 25. Echoes of the past overlap the present in Harmony's simple one-bedroom home. The walls are crowded with art collected through many years. Portraits of Harmony done by a friend show younger versions of the smiling, red-headed woman. The brick patio outside her back door was put in by children in her son's long-ago play group. The charm of Harmony's home is immediately clear. A string of 1,000 origami cranes, made by a Japanese friend, heralds her commitment to peace. French doors bring the outside in. A handsome rooster stalks insects in the lush, green yard. Harmony's commitment to the environment isn't as obvious until she shows a visitor around. A small utility closet houses her composting toilet, the only indoor toilet facility Harmony has. She sends visitors down a moss path to the outhouse. She bathes in water pumped from her 1,500-gallon cistern, the water collected from rain water on the roof. A back-up cistern holds 5,000 gallons. A wood-burning stove heats the house in cold weather. Harmony's clothes are mostly hand-me-downs. "Some people say they see a different possibility when they come here," Harmony said about her simple life. She described her life's purpose as encouraging people to live in an aware manner in the midst of a non-thinking, consumer society. "Barbara is so brave in the way she embraces higher-minded principles in her everyday life," said longtime friend and neighbor Poco Carter. Although some people might scoff at Harmony's idealistic vision, there is no arguing with the concrete form her activism takes in the world, Carter said. "If you look at the reality -- at the world conferences she's attended, at the meetings with people, discussing ideas -- it's pretty profound, the work that she's actually accomplishing." Sometimes Carter wakes in the night and looks toward Harmony's home, where a light burns into the wee morning hours. She knows her friend is at her computer, working on issues that impact the globe. "She's devoted her life to this," Carter said. "She's a lighthouse for me." Back to the top