Flash floods, wildfires and hurricanes are often perceived as damage caused by rapidly changing climates. But now climate change is also emerging as a growing threat to clean, safe drinking water across the country.
Massive floods that knocked out a dilapidated water system in Jackson, Michigan this week left more than 150,000 people without drinking water. A warming world.
Mikhail V. Chester, professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering at Arizona State University, said: “The climate is simply changing faster than how quickly infrastructure can be changed.”
Earlier this summer, more than 25,000 people were left without water after devastating floods hit eastern Kentucky, destroying entire neighborhoods and breaking water pipes.
During the summer, utility companies across Texas Hundreds of water main breaks Record-breaking heat has scorched and displaced the soil around the drought-hit pipes. This comes after a severe winter storm that plunged Texas into freezing darkness in February 2021 and burst thousands of pipes.
And from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, severe hurricanes like Harvey and Ida regularly undermine water providers, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without water in the days or weeks after the storm has passed. are forced to boil water and compete for bottles.
This is due to dynamics such as rising sea levels that can contaminate water supplies with saltwater, and a western “mega-drought” that is draining reservoirs and depleting the Colorado River, which supplies water to about 40 million people. In addition to slow threats.
President Biden has made Jackson’s chronic water problem a central argument for the sprawling infrastructure bill he signed into law last fall. But it’s only recently that money has started to flow from that legislation to states and cities, and Jackson’s take is nowhere near the $1 billion or more that city officials say will be needed to replace the system.
The Infrastructure Act promised about $50 billion for climate resilience. It is a lifeline for communities whose water systems are threatened by climate shocks. The money represents a political bet by Democrats that government spending can address decades of underinvestment and neglect that have disproportionately depressed places like Jackson’s that are poor and inhabited by minorities.
But the new law also reveals what experts say are weaknesses in the way the federal government allocates such money. To be eligible for the grant, the city must be able to pay for her members of professional staff who can put together a competitive application. This poses a challenge for many small and poor cities. These cities are often at the mercy of state officials who decide which applications are sent to the chain.
In the past two years, Jackson has not applied for either of the two federal climate resilience programs that have significantly boosted the infrastructure bill, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency data.
It is not clear if Jackson decided not to apply or if he tried to apply but was blocked by state officials. He did not disclose whether he had attempted to apply for the grant, saying a formal public record request was required.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that Mississippi will receive $75 million to upgrade its statewide drinking water system, with another $429 million available over the next five years. But that money is in the hands of the state legislature, not Jackson officials. The city has used more than $20 million from Biden’s 2021 economic assistance bill, the American Rescue Plan, to address water and wastewater needs, she said. She also said there is about $31 million available for the city to improve its water system through Environmental Protection Agency revolving loan funds.
Biden called Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antal Lumumba on Wednesday to discuss the situation. A White House press secretary told reporters that Biden “expressed his determination to provide federal assistance to the long-term effort to address the immediate crisis and rebuild Jackson’s water infrastructure. ‘ said.
In Jackson, a majority-black city, decades of underinvestment, mismanagement and suburban migration have exacerbated water problems and reduced public works flows. .
“I’ve been taking the kids to friends and family’s homes to bathe them,” said waitress Brittany Smith, who said the water was brown when she took a shower this week. I don’t want to wash the dishes in it.”
The vulnerability of the city’s water system has been a problem in Jackson for decades. But recent floods have created a problem the city has never tackled before, as pumps were overwhelmed by surges of water.
“It’s never happened in as long as I’ve been in Jackson,” said City Councilman Brian C. Grisel.
“Our flood control, the system that we have in place, is very outdated,” Grisel said. “We build more subdivisions, we build more businesses, and each time we build we change the landscape and the way water flows where it should.” Flood Control explains it. He said he didn’t make the necessary upgrades to do so.
Some experts say billions more are needed to overhaul the nation’s 147,000 public water systems that were not designed to handle today’s extreme weather. Some cities are considering costly measures such as building desalination plants or injecting treated wastewater into aquifers to cut off the seawater.
Allison Lassiter, assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, said: “The Infrastructure Act has only scratched the surface of what is needed.”
Even in cities with the tax bases necessary to do the job, local officials can be reluctant to earn enough to cover it.
Ashlynn S. Stillwell, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said. “Utilities know how bad it is, but they may not have the massive capital funds to do something about it.”
Demographic and economic changes have exacerbated these problems in cities like Jackson. A shrinking population means that maintenance costs will be spread among a smaller number of toll bearers, putting pressure on authorities to delay upgrades. Dr. Stilwell said remaining residents will have less income, making it more difficult to raise interest rates.
And on top of that comes climate change, bringing more intense storms. It’s a weather disaster on a scale that drinking water infrastructure, like all other pieces of urban infrastructure, was not designed to deal with. Properly maintained.
In eastern Kentucky, 5,000 customers are still being asked to boil water a month after flash floods hit towns. Water connections have been almost fully restored, but about 80 customers are still unable to get their water back.
One of these homes in the Canny River community, owned by Justina Sulliers’ parents, had its living room and kitchen destroyed when the ground floor was flooded. Her parents and her neighbors use her portable 275-gallon tank to store water. Some are trying to revive old moldy wells that have been left untouched for decades.
“They can’t flush toilets. They can’t bathe. They’re working in dirt and mud and there’s no water,” Sulliers said.
In the city of Buckhorn, Kentucky, of 90 people, where Mayor Thomas Burns Jr. is one of the residents and still has a boil warning, people are happy to have taps working again. Said he was. He said the flooding caused an estimated $1 million in damage to the water system. This is far more than Buckhorn can afford without state or federal assistance.
“We’ve been ignoring infrastructure,” he said. “It’s scary. We take this for granted about Tamsui.”
Danny Barrett Jr. contributed to the report.