We shouldn’t take water for granted
Water.
It’s abundant, necessary for life, and something we almost completely take for granted.
We can turn on the tap, and it will flow forth for drinking, bathing, swimming, cooking or cleaning. It’s assumed to be safe – many of us get our water from municipal water authorities, which frequently test and treat it.
Our access to water hasn’t always been this secure and reliable. Until relatively recently, in the United States, Europe and other parts of the now-developed world, water was a source of contagion and death. It still is in parts of Asia and Africa, where poor sanitation breeds malaria, cholera, guinea worm disease and diarrhea.
While we typically don’t have to worry about a sip of water leading to a visit from the Grim Reaper, the water systems in this country are not completely free of problems. We were reminded of this by a story that appeared in the Thursday edition of this newspaper about two Mon Valley water authorities that reported excessive levels of cancer-causing chemicals in their water. Charleroi’s municipal authority notified its customers high levels of triahalomethanes were discovered in the water for service areas surrounding the communities of Twilight and Upper Speers. The same issue has been bedeviling Fredericktown’s Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority.
A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said sewage treatment plant overflows and heavy rains are the culprit for Charleroi’s troubles, and a settling pond at its treatment facilities should provide a remedy. Meanwhile, the Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority needs to replace its treatment plant – something it doesn’t yet have the resources to do.
No one in these Mon Valley communities should panic or start stocking up on bottled water – the H20 that pours from their spigots is still safe, though Charleroi told its customers to talk to their doctors if they have any specific health worries.
That’s not the case if you travel about 400 miles west of the Mon Valley to Flint, Mich. Perhaps America’s most woebegone city, thanks to decades of deindustrialization and population loss, Flint’s plight has only deepened thanks to lead that seeped into the city’s drinking water.
In a desperate bid to save money, the cash-strapped birthplace of General Motors switched from the water system of nearby Detroit two years ago to water from the Flint River. It turns out, however, the river water had a high salt content and caused the pipes in Flint’s system to corrode. This allowed lead to percolate into the system. Now, estimates have it that 4 percent of Flint’s children have elevated levels of lead in their bloodstreams.
Flint switched back to Detroit water, but it is almost certain to incur additional costs in the years ahead, since lead poisoning can result in learning disabilities and mood disorders. And all of this could have been avoided if Flint only spent an estimated $100 per day on water treatment. Marc Edwards, a professor at Virginia Tech, told NBC News “there is no question that if the city had followed the minimum requirements under federal law that none of this would have happened.”
Flint’s problems are, thankfully, not widely shared, but they should serve as a warning. A 2013 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s drinking water infrastructure a grade of “D,” noting there are more than 200,000 water main breaks in the United States every year, and the cost of bringing our systems up to date would cost in excess of $1 trillion.
When it comes to water, we don’t have grounds to be complacent.