Harmony Recognized for Water Work

 By Susan Lourne
Lovely County Citizen

Long-time water advocate Barbara Harmony was honored at the Arkansas Watershed Advisory Group’s 2004 Watershed Conference in Little Rock Friday. Harmony won the statewide Clean Water - Stronger Communities Volunteer Award recognizing her “exceptional service in engaging her community in environmental awareness.”
AWAG recognized Harmony for co-founding the National Water Center in Eureka Springs; organizing two National Strategy on Water Quality conferences and two Ellen Swallow Richards retreats; the One Clean Spring project; and generally promoting “environmental education through workshops, video tapes, audio tapes, books and public meetings and surveys.”
In her acceptance speech, Harmony emphasized the importance of support from others in doing environmental work. “The thing that makes a person keep going is having at least one good person to work with on a project.” She specifically mentioned Ann Armstrong as founder of the Kings River Watershed Partnership and Robert McAfee, founder of the Arkansas Environmental Education Association.
Harmony also noted how widespread and strong the watershed concept had grown since the Ozark Area Community Congress first passed a resolution embracing watershed management as the key to protecting water resources 25 years ago. “The thing about the watershed concept is that it helps people become aware of where their water comes from and where it goes,” Harmony said. “Awareness of ourselves in the water cycle brings us closer in our connection with nature. Having that connection to nature, we can act more in accordance with natural laws ."
One simple way Harmony believes people can achieve greater awareness of the water cycle is by using rain barrels. She also stresses use of composting toilets noting that “if people weren’t toilet trained to water, they wouldn’t use it as a waste vehicle.” Referring specifically to the Ozarks, Harmony noted “we're living on rock and need to be aware of how fragile the karst terrain is; it’s not like being in a place that actually has soil.’
Harmony stated how very grateful she is to live in a place with so much water. The conference was held at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Little Rock, and she said that it felt appropriate to receive the award in a hotel overlooking the Arkansas River “where [the Peabody] ducks get the red carpet treatment.”
Closer to home, Harmony said that she particularly likes working on the One Clean Spring project, because “it makes people happy to think of drinking out of a spring.”