Malvina Reynolds' songs against water pollution (1970, 1973)

Clean Water (1970)

Clean water, clean water, clean water.
Mister and Mrs. me and you,
What makes you think our gunk should go,
Out where the sparkling rivers flow,
Down from the mountain heads of snow,
Out to the rolling sea?

Rivers where fish are dancing round
Where ferns and willow trees abound,
And sunny water bugs are found.
Rivers that once were food and home
For fish and ferns and sunny bugs and me.

Clean water, clean water, clean water.
Clean water, clean water, clean water. I cry.
Get that junk and that gunk
Out of my clean water
Before the fish and the sunny bugs all die,
And you and I.



The Fragile Sea (1973)

Our fathers knew the ocean as a friendly enemy,
They took their equal chances in the storm.
They trusted in the sail, they fought the mighty whale,
They played like sunny children on the shore.

Chorus:
The sea, the sea, the fragile sea.
Our source, our provider and our road to liberty.
Now we use it as a dump hole in this mad economy,
And we never will survive a dying sea.

Our sister is the sea bird, our brother is the gar,
The smallest plankton creatures as important as we are.
The chain of life's been moving thru a hundred million years,
We cut it at our peril and the pipeline is the shears.
(Chorus)

Do you see the seagull dead in his integument of tar
Who was once a soaring creature of the sky?
It's the oil company that's now the ruler of the sea
That makes ocean and its children fail and die.

(Chorus)
Have you seen the crystal waters of the North Canadian coast?
That's how this planet's oceans used to be.
With our muscle and our brain we must make it so again,
For we never will survive a dying sea.

It's impressive how clear view has an old woman and in early seventies about environmental ploblems and extensive contamination hazards that will become huge the following years in many places in her country. Sewage or dumping of toxic waste near rivers or underground water poisoned residential areas (Woburn, Hinkley, Love Canal, etc), Exxon Valdez disaster eliminated the once "crystal waters of the North Canadian Coasts" and many others.

you can hear her most famous song "little boxes" performed by Pete Seeger in youtube