Recently, CNN published a feature on cities that are one natural disaster away from a catastrophic water crisis. One specific concept discussed in the piece is the dangers of flooding for cities that have aging water infrastructure, particularly cities that still rely on older systems consisting of lead pipes. The ideas here are simple enough, overflows of water through storms, flooding, and even snowfall can put more pressure on infrastructure than it is equipped to handle, causing a leaching from lead pipes and/or an unpredicted discharge of other pollutants into local water systems. Quite often, mixtures of the effects of climate change, and even human error, can only exacerbate such scenarios.
CNN, however, does not have to hypothesize. This very scenario happened only last year in the town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, a small town of about 13,000 people approximately 1 hour outside of Santa Fe. The worst wildfire in the history of the state caused an excessive amount of debris and ash on the hills surrounding the New Mexico town in the Spring of 2022, right before its annual monsoon season that replenishes the water supply of the city.
Unfortunately, Las Vegas experienced quite literally the perfect storm, as the monsoon season produced unusually high amounts of rain, enough so that the ash and debris on the nearby hillsides washed into the water supply of the city and contaminated it. In August, the city announced nationally that it only had 40 days of clean water left. To make matters worse, the mayor of Las Vegas laid the blame on the federal government, attributing the size of the Spring fires to mistakes made during forest burns by the U.S. Forest Service.
On a smaller scale, such a crisis reminded me of Day Zero in Cape Town, South Africa, when the city officially announced that it would be out of water by a certain timeline before the city and its residents acted collectively, and eventually benefitted from incredibly lucky rainfalls.
To the benefit of Las Vegas residents, city and state officials were able to mobilize resources and funds to install a temporary treatment facility at the base of the water supply for the city, and they are now moving forward on a permanent facility to account for future occurrences. In the wake of its crisis, the small town of Las Vegas was forced to apply for $100 million in state and federal funding to build the facility, but at what cost? Solving a crisis after it happens almost always costs more than it does to prevent it ahead of time, physically, emotionally, and financially.
I feel it best to add that I do not wish to short the efforts of engineers and scientists that design and build all this infrastructure in a hurry. Rather, my argument is that policymakers must act not only faster, but pre-emptively so that these individuals can do their jobs better and more efficiently before things get out of hand, as they did in Las Vegas. Extraordinarily heavy rainfall almost always causes problems for struggling water infrastructure, as California found out during its torrential downpours in the wake of its widely publicized drought.
Every public treatment plant requires approval, funding, votes, and yes, even politics before the miracle workers can do their work. The time for all American cities to start doing that is now. For example, several states, such as New Jersey and Michigan, have learned their lessons the hard way and implemented mandatory statewide lead replacement programs to be done by a hard deadline. While programs like the New Jersey plan are a good start, political and legal issues for water exist differently in every region in the United States. The Federal government can offer money, but it’s on states and localities to think ahead. Way ahead. As I discussed in my post last month, the Supreme Court has only continued to hamstring the Federal government on this matter, and sadly the ability to preempt must fall on states and localities for now.