The World on The Water Crisis

Introduction

“There are about 845 million people who do not have access to convenient or clean water and every 90 seconds, someone dies of a water-related disease” (About Water.org). This is data from developing countries such as Bangladesh, India, and nearly a dozen more according to this website. People today can have the perception that the U.S. is a country with little water issues while other countries are the only ones affected. It is seen in social media and commercials that people in developing countries must walk hours each day to find drinking water that usually isn’t even clean, while this is true, they aren’t the only ones concerned by water problems. The Water.org Foundation was founded 25 years ago by Gary White and actor, Matt Damon. Matt Damon was featured on the website’s commercial that premiered during the 2018 Super Bowl, explaining that for every Stella Artois chalice purchased will buy water for someone in one of the 13 developing countries that they provide to. “Such a simple thing, clean water at the turn of a tap,” Matt Damon says on the commercial, referring to the U.S.’s “convenience of clean water” (Artois). In this commercial, Matt Damon is comparing the U.S. to the developing countries, convincing us to donate money to give clean water as if our water doesn’t need major improvement. What is not being said in these commercials and advertisements is that the U.S. will need support in supplying new water infrastructure, and we won’t have an option to give extra money then as the water company’s bills will rise in the next few years. Though the cost of water is raising to help fix the U.S.’s water issues, it is impossible for some people to afford. “The percentage of U.S. households who will find water bills unaffordable could triple from 11.9% to 35.6%” over the next five years” (Sorrel). Our citizens are donating millions of dollars to these organizations which are undoubtedly great for people in developing countries, but instead, we should be raising more money for our country as this could help with the general rise in water bill pricing that can hurt many families. Our water is not safe a lot of the time in the U.S., but society has the idea that countries like India, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia are the only ones in real harm.

Water issues in America

The U.S. has severe water issues, but that isn’t well-known by many people today. Sure, we see boil-water advisories every once in a while in our area, but it happens in many other cities at the same time as well. Not to mention that there are places in the U.S. that have gone without water for months to years due to lead contamination which affects children immensely. In 2017, the ASCE gave the drinking water infrastructure of the U.S. a grade D (America’s Grades). “The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act, passed in 1974, are the two primary federal statutes addressing water quality in the United States” (Buckley). These laws prevent pollution to conserve water and waste, and other harmful behaviors that can affect our water. Though the government created these laws to make a change, they aren’t always implemented effectively. This leniency can cause an increased willingness for people to take the small risk of getting penalized for breaking these rules. “Less than 6% of water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials” (“The Challenges with America’s Water Infrastructure.”). In this way, the government is enabling the people of our country to continue these harmful behaviors which are furthering the chances of contamination and cutting our water supply. There are several more statistical facts on the U.S.’ water issues that shows our water isn’t, per se, clean. “The ASCE estimates that a water main breaks every 2 minutes, or 240,000 breaks a year in the U.S.“

Some water pipes in the US can be up to 150 years old, most of which are lead pipes, which were banned over three decades ago. These pipes can cause lead contamination when busted. We talked about how lead can especially affect pregnant women and children, but to what extent? “Although children don’t often die of poisoning by lead, health experts note, its effects tend to start subtle but insidious. By the time the poisoning becomes apparent… it is too late to undo the permanent brain damage.“ The poison, she says, “is chipping away at the learning potential of kids whose potential has already been chipped away by their environment.“ Lead has been exposed to hundreds of thousands of people through water, soil, and even air. The short-term effects can range from anxiety, tremors, stomach cramps, coma, and possibly death. While long-term effects can cause things such as anemia, reproductive impairment, and nervous system damage. Whereas pregnant women and children under 5 at the most at risk, in this stage, developmental delays and miscarriages are highly likely. “Even a one-time exposure to high levels of lead can have immediate and serious health effects”. Lead can be airborne because of the years of burning gasoline that contained lead, it is also reported that lead exposure can alter DNA and affect future generations. “The researchers reported in Scientific Reports last September.  Some mothers themselves had been born with high blood lead levels, which means that their mothers had been exposed to lead. The researchers proposed that if grandma had lead in her blood, her grandkids could show it.” Thankfully, scientists caught up to the effects that” lead exposure brings and have been trying to decrease lead in every possible way such as banning lead paint and lead pipes. Although the decades of damage have been done, scientists are supposedly working their hardest to reduce lead exposure. We need to continue to raise awareness and take action so the government goes through with their plan faster, so we can prevent more damage sooner.

Lead can cause an abundance of life-long issues to thousands of actions like changing water providers, which is what happened in Flint, Michigan in 2014. During this, “as many as 8,000 children were exposed to this contamination” (Tabuchi). “Experts warn lead contamination in water can lead to cancer, gastrointestinal diseases, behavioral problems and severe developmental delays in children” (Philip). Since then, residents of Flint have had to use bottled water for everything from drinking to toilet water. Finally, four years later, “on April 6th, 2018, Michigan declared the water clean as it has been below the required lead level for 2 years. Because of this, they will be cutting their free bottled water program, although, residents are skeptical on how long their water will be safe.” (Ahmad). In fact, some places in Flint did test above the safe lead requirements. “More than 4 percent of water samples collected in the final round of testing at Flint Community Schools’ buildings had elevated levels of lead. Yet, they are still debating on cutting their free bottled water program. Also included in the article wrote, “The mayor, Weaver believes the state should continue to pay for bottled water until all lead or galvanized water service lines in the city have been replaced, which could take another two construction seasons to complete.” Even with making a significant improvement, there are still levels too high in some areas. Children are the most susceptible to damage from lead contamination, yet there are still elevated levels in places like schools. Before cutting their free water, they should make sure it is up to standards everywhere, otherwise, it could harm more children. This occurrence caused thousands of children to develop some type of mental or developmental delays, which will affect them for the rest of their life. If the U.S. had been more driven to replace the water infrastructure, this could have been prevented. It should be a sign that they should pick up the slack and start working before more people become affected by lead contamination. Incidents like this happen in thousands of other cities as well, including our own, but not to the extent of Flint, Michigan.

The city of Pittsburgh had 5 boil-water advisories posted from January 2017 to January 2018. Two were caused by water main breaks, while the others were due to potentially harmful bacteria in the water (Krauss). We also have other issues, such as elevated lead levels as well. “Of samples taken last month by customers themselves at 114 high-risk residential addresses, 90 percent showed lead at 21 parts per billion (ppb) or fewer, according to estimated results shared by PWSA.” Our lead contamination rises and lowers, the standard considered safe is below 15ppb. Mind you, these levels are elevated but aren’t much compared to Flint’s ppb level in 2014. ”In one sample of water taken from Flint home, a lead level of 13,000 ppb was found.” (Dingle). Whereas other places in Flint ranged to 800 ppb, which is still astronomically high. Pittsburgh’s water is bad enough that the PWSA recommends a lead filter for people such as pregnant women and children. “At-risk groups should not be drinking water from a lead pipe without a lead filter, Edwards said. The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority were exceeding a key lead threshold for more than a year.” For over a year, the water levels were a little over the standard, yet, I don’t remember being informed. Our water seems to never truly be safe, even when we are told that it is. Dingle lists several incidents with lead contamination, “In the summer of 2015, officials discovered significant lead contamination in drinking water in Jackson, Miss., but waited six months before informing residents. The list goes on.” Mississippi waited six whole months to inform the community of the unsafe water levels. There is no statistical data on how many people were affected, but exposure to lead contamination for months doesn’t sound too good. In that time, thousands of children from Pittsburgh and Jackson could have been affected.

There are some media that contains the subject of water problems in the U.S., such as Chinatown (1974), A Civil Action (1998), and Promised Land (2012) which ironically features Matt Damon. These are all fictional movies about fighting the scarcity and contamination in local waters. Although they are fictional, some are based on real events and these movies portray what has happened in these specific places accurately. One of these movies based on this subject is the famous movie Erin Brockovich (2000) featuring Julia Roberts. Where Erin (Roberts), a single mother, fights against the contaminants in water that caused a slew of sickness in her city. This is based on a true story of a woman, Erin Brockovich, from her real case in 1993. This movie raised awareness of what Brockovich fought for, showing us all how possible it is to make a change.  This movie was based on the fight against her city for the local water, but we can relate it to the larger crisis for inspiration to take matters into our own hands like Brockovich did. We can make changes in ways of reducing economic harm and fighting for our pipelines to begin being replaced. Though there aren’t many, these are some movies that talk about the U.S. rather than other countries. These movies help portray how there are real problems in our country as well.

Octavia Butler included water scarcity as a struggle in her book, Parable of the Sower. In the novel, the characters face having to live off little water due to pollution causing global warming to go up, therefore causing water supply to shrink. This was a significant part of the novel as it was one of their many main struggles, which could be a reality if we don’t make a change in our real world. “This is to say, there is water for human consumption, but the quality of water is deadly.” In Lauren’s world, this began with climate change and pollution, which is what is happening in our own world. Water is a necessity for our health, it is a natural resource that we can drive away if we don’t restrain ourselves from continuing our poor economical habits. If we do continue, our world may have to live this reality sooner than we think. Butler possibly added this struggle for the reason of awareness to show us that this could happen to us if we don’t stop our harmful habits.

There are organizations helping to fight the battle on clean water in developing countries such as UNICEF. This organization is popular and often seen in social media ads, common as the well-known actress, Selena Gomez has been one of the ambassadors and promoters since 2009 (UNICEF). While these organizations and many others spread awareness and act on water issues in other countries, we aren’t being educated on how many issues the U.S. has on this subject. The view that the U.S. has safe water with the convenient turn of a handle is misleading as often it is not clean. This can go along with identity and power as the U.S. is perceived as being more powerful than other countries as we are apparently stable enough to give millions of dollars to help others while we have problems that need addressing ourselves. Many forms of media help portray the image that the U.S. is not in need while other countries are, while there are fewer appearances in the issues the U.S. faces.

The U.S. says that they have plans for some water infrastructure over the next ten years, “The US smart water infrastructure market will represent investment value of $8.3 billion cumulatively over the next ten years.” That amount of money could’ve been raised through advertisements to donate for our country rather than others, instead of everyone having a major increase in their bill. One organization dedicated to funding and raising awareness for our country’s water issues is “Clean Water Action.” Their priorities are water, but also oil & gas, climate change & energy, civic engagement & democracy, and waste. All these subjects affect each other as our waste can affect climate change and water pollution, and as oil and gas are natural resources along with water that is also depleting. They allow visitors to the site to take physical action through emailing state representatives directly through the site and through donations. This organization began in 1972 when the “Clean Water Act” was passed. Their site consists of articles of information regarding our world’s climate change status, pollution status, and other factors that are destroying our natural resources. It also gives information on what the government is, is not, or is planning on doing to change it and how us citizens can help. On the “2016 Annual Report” listed on their website shows many of the accomplishments made in this year by Clean Water Action. One of these is “Continuing to lead Rhode Island’s Green Infrastructure Coalition, using demonstration projects to build support for expanded use of nature-based solutions to protect water quality.” This and a million different other facts are listed that shows what this organization has done for our country. They are pushing for green water infrastructure which is exactly what we need to cut out lead contaminations to prevent more people from being affected. Another great organization dedicated to “The U.S. is The US Water Alliance.” This organization is focused specifically on water infrastructure and changes that are affecting our amount of water supply. Nothing is listed on when they began but their mission is to “educate on the need for water and financing, to accelerate the adoption of green water management strategies, and to celebrate what works and drive innovation”. They hold conferences in different areas multiple times a month to raise awareness of our struggles with water and raise money towards it. These organizations are what America needs, they are pushing for our country’s water being improved in every way possible. If we don’t make a change to our climate change and pollution, there won’t be much water left to clean, let alone other natural resources like oil and gas.

Conclusion

The United States of America has plenty of water infrastructure to replace as well as water habits needing to be changed. More people are well-known on the fact that developing countries need funding rather than us as well. This is due to common media such as social media, movies, and commercials. Thankfully, there are a handful of organizations that aim to help our country alone. Thousands of cities go through lead contamination which can be extremely harmful in long and short-term effects to humans, especially children. Because we haven’t replaced all our lead piping, thousands of children have been affected and will live with mental and physical deficits for the rest of their lives. It has caused catastrophes such as in Flint, Michigan where they went without water for four years. Not to mention that water becomes contaminated with lead all the time and sometimes, the community isn’t even informed. We need to protect our people from this piping, which can sometimes be almost two centuries old! Although our government claims to have a plan to replace our water infrastructure, it seems like they’ve been saying it for the last couple decades with little action actually made. We need to continue to raise awareness and attempt to raise money for our water infrastructure to be replaced or else it may not happen for a while. We can take action through raising awareness on social media through sharing posts and creating them, and we can make an effort to cut our water intake to preserve eater. We can also use websites such as “Clean Water Action” to send messages to our politicians, share information to social media, and donate money for our water infrastructure. Millions of people can be affected in the future if our country doesn’t get its new water infrastructure. We can help make a change by pushing our government to fulfill their promises and joining our friends with us, the more people means the bigger the difference, we can do this.