In the northeast and north of Washington, DC one of the expectations in the next couple of months is to see ice. While few of us wish to see it on the road or power lines, have you ever thought about ice? A number of years while walking through an art exhibition pictures of ice were seen in their beauty and glory. Later, while walking through a field after a snow storm, the beauty of the wind and sun and colors of the ice were more appreciated. It was with those thoughts the book Ice by Pauline Couture published by McArthur & Company, Toronto, 2004 was read. One of nature’s abiding mysteries is when the disordered molecules that make up liquid water are exposed to a certain temperature, some kind of signal whips them into shape. The molecules form millions and billions and trillions of pristine hexagonal crystals gripping each other. Despite our vast knowledge we still do not know why this happens.

More than 75% of the earth is water and 60% of humans is water and without water we cannot survive. The fact that 75% of the earth is water is good, the bad news is 98% of it is salt water. We live off 2% of the water in the earth and 75% of the 2% is found in the glaciers in the Antarctica and Greenland. Given we humans pollute our rivers and streams very few are clean and the rivers with the most runoff have the lowest populations, the areas with the fewest runoff from lakes and streams has the highest population.

In the grocery stores, many people read the makeup of the food, in the 1800’s when Frobisher was trying to find a passage above Canada to get to the Far East, his ships left with 84 tons of beer. People would complain about water, but beer would last and equally important it was a dark, heavy nutrient rich brew full of B vitamins and carbohydrates. The beer helped prevent scurvy (a little known fact about the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock is one of the reasons they stopped there was they had run out of beer and need to grow grain to brew more. Think about the movies and beer stories – maybe there are not as outrageous as your might have thought about them).

If you drink Vodka, you likely have seen glacier water or ice for a better drink. People go to the glaciers coming down from Greenland, chip off the ice, bring it to shore to melt the ice and have clean tasting water.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, reading about ice and water it is hard not to be conscious of the matter we use water and how we have mistreated the waterways. Other most of us are not likely to change overnight, it does bring up issues of can we do better? and can out companies which we invest in do better? The answer is yes, but one can also see potential investment opportunities with clean water.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.