Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Joe Biden to back legislation proposing unprecedented investment in America’s ailing water infrastructure amid the country’s worst crisis in decades that has left millions of people without access to clean, safe, affordable water.
After enduring multiple days of freezing temperatures and Texans dripping faucets to prevent frozen pipes from bursting, cities across the state warned Wednesday that water levels are dangerously low, and it may be unsafe to drink.
Amid a global pandemic and protests against police brutality, Erin Brockovich is trying to get America to pay attention to yet another issue: water.
“We are in a water crisis beyond anything you can imagine. Pollution and toxins are everywhere, stemming from the hazardous wastes of industry and agriculture. We’ve got more than 40,000 chemicals on the market today with only a few hundred regulated. We’ve had industrial byproducts discarded into the ground and into our water supply for years. This crisis affects everyone – rich or poor, black or white, Republican or Democrat. Communities everywhere think they are safe when they are not,” she wrote in an opinion story for the Guardian.
Ageing infrastructure, legacy pollution and emerging contaminants across the US are driving a growing urgency to do something about America’s water crisis.
Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic requires access to safe, clean water. While some Americans decry their “loss of freedom” by being told to wear a mask in public spaces, others don’t have the freedom to wash their hands with clean water.
Millions of families in America risk losing running water over unpaid bills as moratoriums on shutoffs expire across the country, despite record levels of unemployment and mounting fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic.
Running water had been guaranteed to about two-thirds of Americans as hundreds of utilities suspended disconnections amid warnings from public health experts that good hygiene, particularly hand-washing, was crucial to curtailing the spread of the virus.
Among being big, bold and beautiful, the Torrey Pine tree could also be the solution when it comes to helping with the world’s water crisis.
“As a child we would go hiking there [Torrey Pines] every single weekend and see how there were giant puddles under the tree.”
The early afternoon sun was pounding the parched soil, and Gus Whyte was pulling on his dust-caked cowboy boots to take me for a drive. We’d just finished lunch—cured ham, a loaf of bread I’d bought on the trip up, chutney pickled by Whyte’s wife, Kelly—at his house in Anabranch South, which isn’t a town but rather a fuzzy cartographic notion in the far west of New South Wales, a seven-hour drive from Melbourne and half as far again from Sydney.
Restaurants in Poway reopened Saturday morning after six days of darkness, with owners and employees happy to be back at work, but upset about the costly interruption to their businesses and lives.
A week ago, restaurants, bars and other businesses that handled food — about 190 in all — were ordered to close by the county’s health department after the state issued a boil-water advisory for the entire city.
Aging water treatment systems, failing pipes and a slew of unregulated contaminants threaten to undermine water quality in U.S. cities of all sizes.
Why it matters: There’s arguably nothing more important to human survival than access to clean drinking water.
