Global Rundown
- Residents in Puerto Rico have gone more than two months without running water after a crack in a major supply pipeline exacerbated shortages.
- Communities living along El Salvador’s largest lake fear the government contaminated it with chemicals to kill an invasive weed.
- The source of a rare bacteria discovered in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s wastewater treatment system has been traced back to a hyperscale data center.
- Political appointees, not peer-reviewers, would have the power to approve U.S. federal grants if a proposed change is approved, putting the future of freshwater funding in limbo.
HotSpots H2O: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Tens of thousands of people in San Juan, Puerto Rico and the city’s surrounding communities have gone more than two months without reliable running water, El Nuevo Dia reports.
The crisis, which stems from a recent crack in a major water transport pipeline, has been slowly building for years. The island’s aging water utility infrastructure has long been neglected, the Guardian reports, with subsequent disruptions at water treatment plants and reservoirs in recent weeks exacerbating the original issue. Businesses have reported spending upwards of $3,000 every week to secure water for cooking, cleaning, and operating toilets, while everyday residents are spending between $70 and $100 per day to secure the resource, often from public cisterns that are refilled via water distribution services.
The shortages have triggered a crisis response. In June, Puerto Rico’s Governor Jenniffer González Colón activated the National Guard to circulate four 2,000-gallon tanker trucks through communities. The country’s tourism and agriculture sectors have additionally put several water delivery vehicles into service around the island.
“We have been focused from the very beginning on ensuring that our people have access to potable water while system recovery work continues,” González Colón said, the San Juan Daily Star reports. “We are mobilizing every available resource from the government and the private sector to address this emergency with urgency.”
In a 2019 report card published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Puerto Rico’s drinking water infrastructure received a D grade, with both dams and wastewater earning a D+. In an update published last December, experts estimated that the U.S. territory needs $3.9 billion to improve its public drinking water utilities, on which 96 percent of the island relies.
More than 40 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents live below the poverty line, and the shortages have had an adverse effect on both peoples’ physical and mental health. NPR reports that psychologists are seeing an uptick in depression and anxiety stemming from the lack of water availability. Meanwhile, a hot summer is not helping matters — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, roughly 61 percent of the island by area is currently experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions.
Recent WaterNews from Circle of Blue
- The AI Boom Is Prolonging Indiana’s Fossil Fuel Era, With Hidden Costs for Water — Gas turbines and an old coal plant are expected to consume nearly 7 billion gallons of water annually in service of a new Amazon data center.
- Forget Western Water War: Local Managers Choose Partnership — Collaboration keeps water flowing.
The Big Picture
Years of untreated sewage flows and agricultural pollution have put El Salvador’s largest lake, Lake Suchitlán, on the brink of ecological collapse, the Guardian reports. Over the past year, a series of shocking and sudden events has sparked a mystery for those who live along the freshwater body. A lack of answers and any rigorous water quality testing, officials warn, means community health is possibly at risk.
Last August, nearly 70 percent of the lake’s surface suddenly became covered by a rapidly growing and invasive water lettuce. The plant likely thrived in the warm, nutrient-dense waters known to result from fertilizer pollution. Thousands of fish turned up dead, threatening the livelihoods of residents who rely on the health of the fishery. A ring of plastic pollution began to accumulate around the lake’s shoreline, turning away tourists who were unsettled by the landscape’s fading beauty, negatively affecting the bottom lines of restaurants and tour guides.
Then, as suddenly, the water lettuce was cleared, though residents today are still awaiting answers on how this was achieved. They speculate that the government used drones to deploy chemicals possibly harmful to human health, but federal officials have not been forthcoming with answers. In the meanwhile, with few other options for accessing protein or drinking water, residents in the Lake Suchitlán region continue to eat fish and collect water from the possibly contaminated source, all while systematic pollution of the basin continues.
Current Affairs
Science, health, and environmental organizations across the United States are railing against a proposed federal rule change that, if enacted, would fundamentally change how federal grant money is distributed across the country. New regulations proposed by the Office of Management and Budget would give political appointees, not panels of peer-reviewers, the power to approve and deny project proposals.
The consequences of such a sweeping change could be significant for freshwater conservation, research, infrastructure improvement, and ecosystem health.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is the most resonant example of how bipartisan federal investment has made a difference for communities’ ecosystems and health. Since its inception in 2010, some 8,000 projects across the Great Lakes basin have received more than $4 billion from federal agencies to improve watershed restoration, reduce pollution, and empower water-conserving agricultural practices, among many other efforts.
The public comment period, which ended at midnight on July 13, has shown unilateral opposition to this new rule. According to one analysis conducted by Tech Policy Press, 94 percent of the submitted comments rejected these changes.
In a statement, the American Meteorological Society said that the change would reduce “public access to weather, water, and climate information.”
“The proposal would reshape and weaponize how the Federal government awards and administers all grants and other forms of financial assistance, touching over $1 trillion in annual Federal awards,” a Lawyers for Good Government and Environmental Protection Network statement reads. “The provisions touch every state, every Tribe, local governments, most major universities and hospitals, and tens of thousands of nonprofits, community organizations, and private companies.”
Water Works
The source of a rare bacteria discovered in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s wastewater treatment system has been traced back to a hyperscale data center that is currently being built to serve the tech giant Meta, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports.
Cupriavidus gilardii, which occurs naturally in soil and groundwater but is rarely found in municipal wastewater, was detected during a routine test by city officials. As a result, Cheyenne “has permanently terminated Meta’s discharge privileges,” the outlet reports, and adopted a new policy requiring data centers that use closed-loop cooling systems to collect wastewater from cooling equipment in a separate storage tank, instead of in the city’s wastewater supply.
The incident spotlights the lack of clear understanding on how effluents used in new data centers, especially those with closed-loop cooling systems, may impact local water resources.
