Hold Your Water

I rent a dog from time to time. Not really, but I have a friend who is a student and a bartender, and rather than have the poor mutt locked in an apartment all the time, he stays with me a few days a week.
Why not? I don't have time for a dog of my own, I have a decent sized yard and he's pretty good for a Heeler mix puppy.

Sometimes he plays over at my neighbor's house with a Pitt Bull mix the same age as him. Sometimes I take him to the park at Auditorium Shores and let him run with the dogs there. He always barks at the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue.
Sometimes we just hit the east end of Town Lake at the Colarado River Park near my house and hang out there. It's mostly hispanic families and not many dogs, but if I'm in one of my moods, no one tries to talk to me... Not in english anyway.
The east end of the lake (The lakes are not lakes, they are just dammed up portions of the Colorado River... Not THE Colorado River just the Colorado River...) is the ass end of the park. Past the dam there the river bed is almost devoid of water.

Water.

Oh, Yeah! Water... This post is about water. Not river water... Drinking water. When taking the dog down to the park at the east end of the lake I started to notice the trash.
Austin is a very liberal city. Lots of hippies, vegetarians and vegans, greenpeacers, save the planeteers and global warming nutjobs.

Because this park is the end of the line, so to speak, this is where the trash ends up. Now, I'm used to seeing beer and soda bottles and cans carelessly disposed of... Smashed up coolers, candy wrappers and the occasional shoe.
What shocked me was the plastic bottles. In particular plastic water bottles. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
Evian. Deer Spring Park. Aquafina. Desani. Ozarka. HEB brand. Fiji.
Liter bottles. 20 oz bottles. 16 oz bottles.
It's disgusting. Small coves entirely harbored by little plastic water bottle ships. Oh, the irony of polluting the water because you want to carry a bottle of unpolluted water around in your fist.

It's not like I live out in the middle of the west Texas desert. Austin is a city with over half a million people in it. In most of the park you're rarely more than a short walk from a food retailer. In some places there are even water fountains... Even dog water fountains if yours is too prissy to drink directly from the lake. Nobody is going to dehydrate and die in the middle of the park in the middle of Austin in the middle of the hill country in the middle of Texas. The idea that someone needs to haul around a bottle of water is ludicrous.
These are the people who have a "fun run" or bicycle race or charity event for every little minor ill the world encounters. Save the Barton Spings Salamander!
All that is aside from the fact that every third Prius here in Austin has a "No Blood For Oil" bumper sticker on it. How about a "No Blood For Water Bottles" sticker. Plastic is a petroleum based product.