James McMahon:  

My name is Jim McMahon, a professional ecologist of some accomplishment. What is an ecologist, you might ask. Well, it's a person who has studied the natural function of our planet's life support systems; her rivers and forests, the ecosystems that support all living things. I launched my company, Sweetwater LLC, in September 2002 after an extensive search for a business that I could operate from home. I live in a lovely little spot where I overlook the headwaters of the Santa Clara River while speaking with you on the phone. I was tired of the constant strife of the activist role and sought a way to continue to help people but with a greater focus on individuals. I chose water because I'd studied rivers in college and professionally and could build on my knowledge and experience. I provide home water purification systems and consulting services to people seeking a healthy lifestyle, or just trying to solve a water problem. I grew up in Illinois, having been born in Chicago and growing up in the southwest suburbs back when they were farm fields and forest preserves. I studied Ecology at the University of Illinois and have worked in the environmental field since 1974 when I launched one of the first recycling collection programs in the country in Seattle. Back then there were perhaps a half dozen individuals in the country working on neighborhood recycling. I was a community organizer and went door to door and asked people if they would set out their materials and I would come pick them up in an old van and process them for recycling. That effort grew into a nationwide recycling industry by the mid 80s. My experiences are documented in an essay entitled Closing the Loop in the book The Next West published by Island Press in 1997. (You can read it by clicking on the link above but I'll warn you that it's long.) I worked in recycling for 15 years, launching several successful business ventures and establishing the first intentional variable trash collection rate structure in the country in Seattle. It was my affiliation with my close friend Harry Leavitt that led to this outcome. Harry, having no trash, first brought the idea to my attention and together we formed a coalition that succeeded in convincing the City Council. Recycling in Seattle was and remains extremely successful. Around the rest of the country however it was popularized and polluted by misconceptions. The point of my essay is that industry managed to convince the general public that by recycling we could continue to consume excessive resources and live beyond our means. Environmentalists also went along unwittingly and in the end we'd failed to achieve what we set out to do, but most people think we succeeded. By 1985, recognizing this failure I set out to pursue a growing interest in psychotherapy and personal growth, studying NLP that summer and winter. I still earned my living in recycling and won the successful bid for Waste Management, Inc to provide curbside recycling services in the north half of Seattle. In the fall of 1987 I relocated to Los Angeles to participate in the start-up of the California bottle bill and then in 1987 took a one year sabbatical in the French West Indies. During the time in St. Martin, I studied fiction writing and of course enjoyed the French cafes and the open sea. I also met my now ex-wife. Upon my return to the states, I moved to Denver and began working as a freelance writer and sought a way to work with rivers, since I had always been attracted to flowing water. While in Denver I wrote a local newspaper column on western land use and other environmental issues and published editorials and white papers as a senior fellow for Independence Institute, a conservative, bordering on Libertarian, think tank based out of Golden. Its founder and then President, former State Senator John K. Andrews, Jr. became a good friend and provided an important key that enhanced my ability to publish. At the same time, I studied part time at the Buddhist oriented Naropa Institute. Naropa had a developing program in Deep Ecology that was premised on the notion that the largest barrier to environmental sustainability was man's own ego, the constant need to dominate in all matters. In 1995 I was offered a chance to launch The Nature Conservancy’s Mackinaw River Project in Illinois. Along with my family I moved to the heart of farm country in Eureka, where the mission was to convince farmers to protect and preserve a relatively rich river system. Frankly, the project scared the hell out of me. I spent the first year figuring out how to make progress and building rapport, eventually making a move when the farmers themselves began to hint that they were ready to proceed. The project went from 100 oppo...Expand for more