An Open Letter to Henry Thoreau

I've just finished reading a play about you, Henry, called The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, and I was struck by how strongly you stood for principles carried to their logical conclusion. You refused to support your government's war on Mexico (it was an unjust taking of their land) and, because of this, refused to pay your taxes or let anyone pay them for you.

How many of us would do the same? Would I? I do not support the "war" on terrorism, yet I still pay my taxes. Nor do I support the Connecticut Supreme Court decision overturning the ruling favoring the Shepaug River. Yet I still send the state my taxes.

No, I write letters to officials and to newspapers instead in my search for redress and, in some measure, as a means of expressing my voice. But I'm not hopeful that enough people feel the same way for anything to happen. These changes are like the perennial Red Sox run for the pennant: they sometimes show glimmers of promise but are always around the next bend in time. I know, though, that if our whole town and the town of Roxbury had the same courage as you, Henry, and collectively agreed to withhold our tax payments to the state, something would happen.

So, Henry, I ask you: What are we to do? What is left for us who feel that the power of finance can only be toppled by the power of greater finance? What about the currency of men's souls, Henry? Can we awaken enough of it in ourselves to recognize and claim as kin the right to enough water for rivers, enough trees for forests, or enough fishes for the oceans? When will we realize that our own everyday choices contribute to the erosion of our lives, that our affluence deprives us of our wealth? Henry, it's a confusing world we live in and an ironic one.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that Judge Hodgson relied on an improper standard for minimum flows in deciding that, yes indeed, the Shepaug River needs more water to sustain itself. (It actually needs less water taken from it.) Nature was doing fine before we interfered with diversions; healing is a natural process, which will take care of itself when impediments are removed.

Yet the outdated standards set in 1979 by the Department of Environmental Protection for minimum flows, which the high court has now said are all that the City of Waterbury is required to meet in taking water out of the river, were exactly what led to the depraved state of the Shepaug to begin with. In like reasoning, would the court have us now comply with standards for tobacco use, hazardous waste disposal, or civil rights which have become inadequate and have been updated?

Henry, you said: "That government governs best which governs least," and presupposed our wisdom to let well enough alone. But we haven't left the river alone. We built a dam and a tunnel under Bantam Lake to divert the river for the city's thirst. Does this constitute harassment? It certainly impairs the river's ability to heal itself. But the river has no recourse; it can't refuse to pay its taxes.

What if that government takes from the natural rights of all to clean water, clean air, and clean earth? We hear that these actions are often taken for "the greater good." You see, Henry, the river's flow here is symbolic of our faulty thinking (and acting, based on that thinking) everywhere.

Why is it justifiable to take resources from their homes—be they trees, water, fish, or air—to serve the needs of people far beyond local economies? When people need clean, fresh air they move to where it is (witness the retirement waves crashing in Arizona and Vermont). Is water to be exploited merely because we can channel it into pipes and pump it elsewhere? Would we do the same with the air if we could? Is our increasing consumption of bottled water just the first step in relinquishing expectation of clean drinking water from local sources? Or will water follow the marketing plan that our nation's food has—centralized by agri-business and subject to the need to be shipped long distances to all consumers?

You see, Henry, knowing the truth has not dissolved my fear. Nor has it set me free. Instead, it has made me a worried man. The truth expressed by the Supreme Court of Connecticut has not only abbreviated the rights of the river but also of those who would defend it.

From where I sit I can watch the river level fall. It dropped further each sun-baked day this fall, until all current was gone. In many places, the river, as a band of moving water, had vanished. Only fields of cobbles connected the isolated pools, scorched white by the sun. The river is not polluted, yet I am sure that will come, as the first step in degradation is deprivation.

And now, much as in your day, Henry, the world swirls with contention and conflict is imminent. In the face of all this, to withhold my taxes seems a small thing. I wish I had your courage, Henry. Meanwhile, the river waits.