Not a drop to drink.
Or, The Shittening Part 2, Literally
I’m late today, and this will be relatively short.
Before I left beautiful desert California to return home on Saturday, I’d planned to write about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi1, reminiscent of the ongoing crisis in Flint, Michigan2, and soon to be repeated everywhere around this nation. People, mostly in poor and/or minority city neighborhoods, are being served poison out of their own taps and shower heads at home. Our infrastructure above and below ground is crumbling, and that should surprise no one. Fifty years of anti-government, anti-tax propaganda, fifty years of deregulation and privatization, have now literally infected our public water systems along with every other common good that once relied on not just tax dollars but a shared belief in the social contract. I was planning to connect these terrible circumstances with the infamous early 2000s videos of Nestlé Group’s then-chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe seeming to claim that water is not a human right, then walking it back (to some degree) after an international uproar.
It is still my view that privatization in general and a successful tax revolt by elites have absolutely ruined this nation as a functioning entity. Until we come to grips with that basic fact—that there is an unavoidably expensive commonwealth to be supported by progressive taxation if any of us wants this country to remain livable in the most basic ways—the crises hitting our willfully under-capitalized urban cores will begin to affect other regions and other life-supporting public functions as well.
I arrived home in Baltimore late Saturday night and spent the next two days in a jet-lagged, emotionally drained stupor from dealing with my mother’s near-death ordeals. I lost track of the day, thinking Monday was Sunday, and momentarily forgot about this blog. I’ve been putting it out around 8 am Eastern every Tuesday since the beginning of the year—the only creative work I’ve managed to keep going consistently. (Thank you again to all who’ve been reading and supporting!)
Earlier today (Tuesday) two things happened: a friend and reader in California pinged me to say, in effect, You must be in rough shape because I haven’t gotten your blog post yet. I responded Holy shit. Right after that, I got on Zoom at 10 am with my weekly accountability partner, a musician, writer, and artist friend here in Baltimore, and her first question was,
Have you been boiling your water?
Seems I have arrived home just in time to learn some very poorly communicated news from over the holiday weekend. On Friday during regular testing of the water supply in 19 locations around town, the Department of Public Works found E. coli, a bacteria found in human and animal feces. On Monday morning, DPW issued a “boil water advisory” 3 and a map for a somewhat ill-defined region within West Baltimore itself and certain outlying towns in Baltimore and Howard counties. Some people in affected neighborhoods claimed they were not informed of any risk until Monday night.
There is still a major lack of clarity in this unfolding story. On the one hand, the seemingly slow and incomplete communication from DPW is being treated like a significant scandal. On the other hand, there is no actual E. coli outbreak yet. DPW is claiming by Tweet that this has not been any kind of systemic failure.
Um…okay…?
I find myself caught between believing that local governments have CYA as their first instinct and obfuscation as their first priority…and knowing that our 24-hour-news-cycle and amateur online “investigating” can goad people toward a dangerous hysteria before all the facts are in. (Do you remember this poor depressed kid who disappeared shortly before the Boston Marathon bombing, was wrongly accused to be a suspect by Reddit users, and was later found dead by suicide?)
So I don’t want to jump to conclusions yet. I genuinely don’t want to render any opinion or grand theorizing on the larger infrastructure matter based on what’s happening here in Baltimore as well as in other cities. I need time to read and study this topic more fully and to respond with possible advice for individuals trying to keep from being sickened—and maybe also action steps for charitable donors and activist types trying to solve the larger problem.
I suppose I am flagging readers to an important issue that needs more attention nationwide and worldwide, without pontificating about it just yet. What? Me? Refraining from an opportunity to philosophize? Yeah, a bit uncharacteristic. I think it’s probably jetlag and not something I drank…
Are water rights in a world facing global warming/desertification a concern of yours? Are you connected to accurate sources of information on this topic? In the comments, feel free to share any thoughts you might have. I’ll be back next Tuesday with something more researched and helpful.
Washington Post on 9/3/2022 Living in a city with no water: ‘This is unbearable’
Eight years later, Flint is still struggling to hold responsible parties to account and fully fix the problem.
And people like to tell me I'm "SO negative" whenever I express my prevailing sense that everything is going to shit. 😒
We get those boil water advisories pretty regularly in Jersey City. Our water main system is old and we get ruptures a few times a year. But as to “the crises … will begin to affect other regions and other life-supporting public functions as well” I would argue that we passed that dangerous threshold a few years ago, when the TX Power Grid failed.