{"id":63571,"date":"2022-09-23T06:57:32","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T11:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63571"},"modified":"2022-09-23T06:57:32","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T11:57:32","slug":"in-america-clean-water-is-becoming-a-luxury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63571","title":{"rendered":"In America, Clean Water Is Becoming a Luxury"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In America, Clean Water Is Becoming a Luxury<\/a><\/h3>\n

Our water system\u2019s collapsing\u2014and I found out the hard way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I can\u2019t forget<\/span>\u00a0to turn the kettle on before bed. In the morning, I\u2019ll need that water to wash my hands and brush my teeth. The rest I\u2019ll carefully store in the fridge, away from light and bacteria. It\u2019s a routine I shared with at least 1,500 neighbors\u2014for the better part of a week\u2014when E. coli bacteria tainted West Baltimore\u2019s water, bringing risks from stomach bugs to lethal kidney disease. Welcome to life without clean, running water.<\/p>\n

Across the country, extreme weather is accelerating breakdowns decades in the making. Storms are battering old water and wastewater networks, many with parts built a century ago or more for vastly different climate conditions. Floods are overwhelming existing facilities, sometimes contaminating water at the source.<\/p>\n

Baltimore officials still can\u2019t pinpoint a cause, but storms caused\u00a0dire flooding<\/a>\u00a0here in August, and that\u2019s\u00a0contaminated<\/a>\u00a0the water before. Such storms are getting\u00a0more common and less predictable<\/a>, with climate change the likely reason. Rising sea levels make coastal floods\u00a0even more dangerous<\/a>, despite mitigation plans. A 2019 storm even flooded our harbor with\u00a0more than a million gallons of sewage<\/a>. And Baltimore is far from the only example.<\/p>\n

Running water is everything, which you don\u2019t realize fully until you\u2019re without. Your morning coffee? Bottled or pre-boiled water. Pets? They need theirs bottled or boiled, too. Showers? Fine, if you keep your mouth closed throughout. But that\u2019s harder for kids, and the CDC recommends using bottled or boiled water (cooled first!) to bathe them. Are you one of the\u00a0lucky few<\/a>\u00a0who found powdered infant formula? Don\u2019t forget to use bottled water, too. But city officials, after telling us to do just that, set up exactly three bottled-water pickup spots for everybody at risk.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In America, Clean Water Is Becoming a Luxury Our water system\u2019s collapsing\u2014and I found out the hard way. Getty I can\u2019t forget\u00a0to turn the kettle on before bed. In the morning, I\u2019ll need that water to wash my hands and brush my teeth. The rest I\u2019ll carefully store in the fridge, away from light and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,7],"tags":[5835,33170,18940,12569,7995,827,834,866],"class_list":["post-63571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-clean-water","tag-emily-hofstaedter","tag-mother-jones","tag-potable-water","tag-sewage","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63572,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63571\/revisions\/63572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}