Carol Parenzan has had a long career in water. She’s an environmental engineer and an author, including children’s books. She founded the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association and served as its first riverkeeper.
This year she started a new initiative, and founded The Water Healer. Through speaking, workshops, consulting and storytelling, she hopes to connect people to rivers and to themselves. The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple recently spoke with her about it.
LISTZEN to the interview
Kara Holsopple: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with water. How did it start?
Carol Parenzan: I think that I was born a mermaid. I just absolutely love water, and I’ve always been drawn to water in general and the Susquehanna in specific. I spent many hours by water as a child growing up, going to the state parks, going to the pool.
I was actually a competitive swimmer and a competitive paddler, and spent many hours out on the Susquehanna training for paddling. I was drawn so much to water that I went off to Penn State to major in environmental engineering with a focus on water.
Kara Holsopple: In your time as the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper, what were the biggest issues facing the river, and then widening that lens, what do you think are the biggest threats to our water resources today?
Carol Parenzan: I’m going to go back to when I decided to go into water, going into college. I used to tell people that one day water was going to be the new gold. Water is what we’re going to have wars over. Water is what we’re going to fight over. Water’s what divides people. I still strongly believe that, and we’re seeing some of that, especially with the water scarcity issues in the western part of the United States over the last year or two.
In the Susquehanna, there are several issues. The one that’s most present, most pressing is natural gas exploration and Marcellus shale, and the amount of water it takes to explore and extract from a natural gas well. But also what is left behind and what destruction is done along the way.
The one event that really changed my perspective on energy in my watershed was when the Sonoco pipeline ruptured, and that would have been 2016, that fall. During an extreme weather event – and of course climate change is another big issue, especially in a mountainous area, like the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper area – I think they got eight inches of rain in a very short period of time. It took out a pipeline across the Loyalsock [Creek].
The Loyalsock is known for being clean and pristine. It’s home to the Eastern hellbender. It’s home to native trout populations. It’s one of the best fly fishing areas. It used to be one of the best whitewater paddling areas in Pennsylvania. This pipeline ruptured and released gasoline into this creek that then flowed into the Susquehanna and towards drinking water intake lines. It was a very serious situation. That brought my attention strongly to our natural resources and what we need to do to protect them.
Kara Holsopple: Has the rolling back of federal water protections under the Trump administration, like excluding some wetlands and streams for protection under the Clean Water Act, impacted your mission or changed how you approach your work?
Carol Parenzan: Not necessarily my mission, because I’m no longer the riverkeeper and I’m no longer the licensed voice. I think my primary purpose right now with my work is to provide connection points for the public to the water, if that’s through formal events, if that through things that I write, if that is through opportunities I have to speak in front of communities.
That’s really what I see myself as, the bridge builder between the message that needs to get out and the different avenues to do that.
What’s fun right now for me is I’ve just launched this initiative, and I’m now reestablishing connections with some of my colleagues. We’re already looking for partnership opportunities to help get that message out there through those organizations that are well-established, well-recognized, and have those connections with the community. I’m hoping to be that bridge builder. That’s really what I see myself as, the bridge builder between the message that needs to get out and the different avenues to do that.
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Kara Holsopple: Where did the name The Water Healer come from?
Carol Parenzan: First of all, as an environmental engineer with a focus in water, I see myself as being the person that healed it from a technical and engineering perspective, applying what I know to making it better, whether it’s for water, wastewater, our watersheds, our drinking water sources.
But also the water as a healer for me. Something I haven’t shared a lot in the last several years is I’ve actually been out on medical disability for over five years, almost six years. I took very ill. It was my coming back to the river, as I say, turning over all the stones to find my healing path back to being myself again. It’s a long journey. The idea of the Water Healer was, I’m here to help others find that water and connect and heal themselves, but I’m also using it as a path for my own healing.
Kara Holsopple: Tell me about your “From the Rivers to the Bay” series, which follows the journey of the Susquehanna River from its headwaters to the Chesapeake Bay.
Carol Parenzan: It actually follows the journey of all the rivers entering the Chesapeake Bay. It’s really difficult for people that live in areas that don’t directly touch the Chesapeake Bay to care about the Chesapeake Bay. It’s not that they don’t care about water and water resources and what they’re sending downstream, but it’s something they see and touch on a regular basis. It’s not where they’re going to recreate. It’s the bridge that they’re driving over.
My primary goal of this series of programs was to allow them to connect to where they were and then follow that path, follow that journey to the bigger picture.
The program being best received right now is the program for children on dinosaur birds, which is all about the great blue heron. Every year, the National Library Service Summer Reading program has a theme, and this year’s theme is “unearthing.” I wanted to create a program that would unearth, unfold, help us discover the connection between our modern great blue heron and the dinosaurs.
A lot of the programs that kids will go to for this series of programs this summer are going be on dinosaurs. I want it to come up with a program that connected them with the past and the present and show that we have modern day dinosaurs and they’re a very strong symbol of river health and water health and the Chesapeake Bay.
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Kara Holsopple: That’s so imaginative.
Carol Parenzan: I love doing that. I think that’s also what has come through with my children’s books. That’s really what I wanna do here with my series on educating in the rivers and the Bay is find those connecting points that are exciting that people can connect to, whether they’re children or adults. And I say that because I believe in what I call the trickle-up theory. If I can get the kids excited, they take the message home to their parents and their grandparents.
Kara Holsopple: What’s your philosophy of environmental education and getting people to care about water?
Carol Parenzan: I think you start where you are. You find that connecting point in the backyard, in the town park, in the school playground. You find something there that somebody can care about and let it grow from there. I think it has to be very experiential. It has to be hands-on. Not everybody learns just by hearing or seeing, reading. They need to have experiences where they can be out on the water, whether it’s paddling or creek stomping or sitting by a stream and learning how to meditate to the sound of water.
Nature is not separate from us. We are in nature. Sometimes we just need to reframe the perspective in which we see ourselves.
I think you start where you are, and that came through very strongly with the latest book that I’ve just written. It’s in the process of getting ready to be released. It’s called The Watershed Way and it gives us the opportunity to look at our personal lives through the lens of a watershed or the river.
The main point that comes out is that the river is the visible part of our lives. It’s what we see, but it’s the land all around that river that actually impacts how that water flows and how it arrives and is delivered to the river and then carried downstream to the ocean.
Our lives are very much like that. We have headwaters, where we’re from, our origins. We have groundwater, the hidden parts of ourselves that sometimes we’re lucky enough to discover in our own personal journeys. We have channels, the way we flow. We have confluences where things come together. We meet new people. We have new experiences. Our lives are enriched by what comes into it. Those are our confluencies.
And then, of course, we have the delta at the end of the journey. And the delta is not an end, it’s the beginning. It’s this constant recreation of ourselves. I think it’s gonna become the center of my message, helping people to see themselves. Nature is not separate from us. We are in nature. Sometimes we just need to reframe the perspective in which we see ourselves.
Carol Parenzan is The Water Healer, and her new book will be out later this spring.
