ABSTRACT
People remain anxious about the effects of industrial activity on water resources and its potential to contaminate their drinking water with alien substances. The most powerful meanings encoded in water permeate all farming activities: water is the ‘lifeblood’ of agricultural products, and these – like water – are ‘essentials’ that flow between and link the human body with the material environment. Farming is a symbolic societal garden in which water appears as the collective substance of production and reproduction, the creator of health and energy. The use of water on farms, even with limited public access, is visible and omnipresent, and many people interviewed in the Stour Valley were plainly of the opinion that this is detrimental to the local ecology. They repeatedly expressed concern about the farmers’ use of pesticides and fertilisers, and some were keenly aware of the controversies about the heavy use of nitrates and their effects on human health and on the health of water resources.
