Water, water everywhere ... but, not always safe to drink

(Earlier in the morning, I submitted this as a possible op-ed in the Register Guard.)
Update: it will make it to print, according to the editor's quick reply

“The next time you come to India, you might hesitate to drink water here” my father laughingly said when I talked with him a couple of days ago. He explained the basis for that remark—a surprise check by government officials at drinking water plants in the city of Chennai, where my parents live, revealed a shocking lack of quality control. He suggested that I read about it on the web, and I did. Officials inspected about 300 facilities that sell packaged drinking water, and even found cockroaches and other insects at one facility.

What a contrast to the situation we experience here in Oregon. The water that comes out of the faucets at our homes is not only safe to drink but also refreshingly tasty. I am reminded of a student who remarked how awful the water tasted when he visited Texas and he wondered why we don’t sell packaged Oregon drinking water in other states.

If you have never thought twice about this tremendous luxury that we take for granted, then make sure you spend at least a minute reflecting on it on March 22nd, which is World Water Day.

A reservoir at Sengottai

Yes, water is a prime requirement for life, and it is that water that makes us fondly refer to Earth as the “Pale Blue Dot. “ As the United Nations notes, “universal access to efficient drinking water supply and sanitation services is the foundation for the fulfillment of basic human needs.”

That very ingredient for life has also historically been one of the easiest ways for disease causing organisms to enter human bodies and sometimes even kill them. A classic example is cholera, which has felled many humans over the millennia. It was during a mid‐nineteen century cholera outbreak in London that a physician, John Snow, systematically linked the disease to water and also to the geographic area that was the source of the outbreak.

Over the 150 years since, the United Kingdom, the US, and other advanced countries invested in sewer systems to make sure that pathogens did not easily contaminate the drinking water system, and improved the water supply infrastructure too. As Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, observed, “In 1900, America’s cities were spending as much on water as the federal government spent on everything except for the military and its pensions.” That phenomenal investment alone contributed to a significant increase in life expectancy.

Investment in water and sewer systems do not necessarily have short‐term profitable returns, which is also why they were traditionally public investments. The returns on these investments come via better health conditions that, in turn, promote higher productivity over a couple of generations.

However, back in India, public investment in water has been inadequate compared to the huge population. Even worse is the situation when it comes to sanitation systems to deal with wastes. Open defecation then easily leads to the contamination of drinking water supplies similar to how the dumping of wastes into the Thames River eventually led to the cholera outbreak in London.

It is relatively easy to question the priorities of a country like India, which has not made investment in water and sanitation systems an urgency. If the country can launch satellites into geostationary orbit and operate as the back‐office for the world, then surely it has the technical know-how and resources to develop this critical infrastructure. But, I suppose democracy is a messy process that often skews priorities.

As if the complications of the political process are not enough, precipitation patterns seem to be changing as well. Farmers and urban dwellers alike note that the monsoons do not seem to be along the old predictable schedules and are also a lot more geographically uneven, with some areas getting drenched and others going dry. More than once my mother has asked me whether it is related to the global warming that she often hears about. “It could be” is all this academic can tell her.

So, given all these, what can we do? At one level, nothing much because it is primarily up to the governments and people in the developing countries to make water a priority. However, as a result of awareness, we might be able to support the activities of foundations and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that are working on these vital issues in those countries. We can also certainly try to understand the importance of freshwater, including in our own areas. More than anything else, thinking about all these and more on World Water Day will yield a new found appreciation for the rain that falls in plenty in the wonderful paradise that Oregon is.