Running Dry
Water is essential to all life including humans. The average human can only live two to seven days without water, in comparison to the 21–40 days one can survive without food. Of course a person’s health, the weather and the individual’s physical activity levels all help determine how long a person will last without water, but overall dehydration is detrimental to the human body. Randall Packer is a biologist at George Washington University. Packers research in Scientific America showed, “…an adult can lose between 1 and 1.5 liters [2.1 to 3.2 pints] of sweat an hour” on a hot day.
“I’m burning up…I’m burning up from the inside like furnace” (Zafar’s description of his dehydration from Animal’s People).
The earth is around 70 percent water, but only 3 percent is drinkable — but not all of that three percent is potable. Water that is safe for drinking (free of germs and chemicals, and is clear) is called potable water. Today, 1 in 9 people lack access to safe water and every year one million people are killed by water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases.
It has been known that insufficient water access mostly affects developing countries, but with time the UN has made sanitation a priority since the 1990’s and the issue of unclean water is improving (very slowly but surely). Now the right of clean and safe water in the undeveloped world is being recognized by developed countries, but now even these developed countries face their own water crisis.
Slow Violence Comes Full Circle
Cape Town, South Africa is a prosperous metropolis with a population of four million people. It is a global tourist destination with its multi-million-dollar beachfront properties, art museums, and two of the world’s top 50 restaurants: bringing in 9.9% of South Africa’s GDP. But even this financially flourishing city is safe from the sneakiest form of slow-violence known as global warming.
Cape Town has faced a severe drought for the last three consecutive years. Global warming affects the movement of water into the atmosphere from land, water surfaces, and plants due to evaporation and transpiration. Man-made industries increase carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. This results increase in actual evaporation, or evapotranspiration in plants. Evapotranspiration affects drier areas by resulting in below-normal levels of rivers, lakes, and groundwater and lack of enough soil moisture in agricultural areas.
On February 1st, 2018, new water restrictions were set in place limiting residence to using 13 gallons of water per person per day. For perspective, the average shower head releases 7 to 10 gallons a minute. Each day without rain is a day closer to day zero when the taps will run dry for most homes and businesses in the city to conserve the very last supplies. The last supplies will be reserved for hospitals and other vital institutions in the city center. Cape Town is on its way to becoming the first modern major city in the world to completely run dry and with rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, it appears it won’t be the last.
Bad crisis management only intensified the affects of the severe drought. In the first two years of the drought, dam levels began to decline and the rapidly increasing population was too much for the city’s outdated water infrastructure. 99.6% of the volume of water in the Western Cape Water Supply System reside in six dams. In 2015, only 60% of the water in the Western Cape Water Supply system was distributed to the city while most of the rest went to agriculture and livestock. Despite decreasing dam levels and continuous drought, the national Department of Water and Sanitation did not cut back on agricultural water use through 2015 and 2016.
We’re Safe, It’s Clean
It is believed that people of the developed world are safe from the hardships faced by undeveloped nations, but as Cape Town proves — no one is safe from the horrors created by man. Cape town fell victims to a form slow violence and politics that put profitable agriculture over people. Similarly, the people of Flint, Michigan fell victim to a cost-saving measure which in the end resulted to a public health emergency.
The United States is one of the most powerful and advanced countries, so how did a U.S. city become affected with unsanitary water?
On April 25, 2014, the city switched its water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the cheaper Flint River. Complains and concerns about the waters taste, smell, and color came in shortly after. In August and September, boil-water advisories were issued after coliform bacteria was detected in tap water. In October, The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality blamed cold weather, aging pipes and a population decline for the bacteria. Peoples’ concerns about the water continued to be ignored and as officials declared the water is not an imminent “threat to public health.”
“It’s clear the nature of the threat was communicated poorly. It’s also clear that folks in Flint are concerned about other aspects of their water — taste, smell and color being among the top complaints.” (Memo for the Governor)
But in the months of February through May of 2015, tests reveal high levels of lead in several homes in Flint, Michigan.
Corrosion inhibitors are chemicals that react with a metallic surface, or the environment this surface is exposed to, giving the surface a certain level of protection...Inhibitors often work by adsorbing themselves on the metallic surface, protecting the metallic surface by forming a film. Officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors which resulted in the release of lead from old pipes to the water supply.
Blood-tests revealed high levels of lead found in residents and especially children. Lead is a toxic metal and can result in serious health risk. The contaminated water resulted in at least 15 known deaths as a result of lead poisoning.
Developed nations often feel detached from the real hardships faced by underdeveloped countries. The hardships that undeniably stem from men consumed by first world greed. But history has shown and current events show that no man is not safe from other man. Whether it be the slow violence that comes from industrial companies (droughts, oil spills, climate change,etc.) or direct irresponsible decisions made for profit, the affects will come full circle. If disregard for other man continues we’ll all run each other dry.
