Jackson, Mississippi, water: The water crisis has gotten so bad, the ...

CNN —

Recent torrential rain coupled with years of water system issues have resulted in a crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, where the city doesn’t have enough water to fight fires, flush toilets or even hand out to residents in need.

Jackson’s main water treatment facility began failing Monday, according to Gov. Tate Reeves. The National Guard was called up to help distribute bottled water as crews work to get the water treatment plant back online, state officials said.

But the distribution itself proved unsustainable. Residents of all ages were seen waiting in lines more than a mile long at Hawkins Field Airport for at least two hours Tuesday for just one case of bottled water. The event was supposed to span three hours, but barely ran two as people were eventually turned away when the 700 cases of water ran out.

“I keep saying we’re going to be the next Michigan,” said Jeraldine Watts, 86, who was able to get water at a grocery store Monday night. “And it looks like that’s exactly what we’re headed for.”

Watts was referring to the water crisis in the city of Flint, which has battled water issues since a 2014 water crisis in which lead-contaminated water fed to residents’ faucets.

People line up for water in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 30, 2022. CNN

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told CNN’s Pamela Brown the city is working on more water distribution events. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency will provide nearly 30 water trucks to help supplement the city events, the mayor said.

“I have been assured by MEMA that they will supplement those locations with about 28 tanker trucks distributed at various points across the city,” Lumumba told CNN.

Explanations for Jackson’s failing system are complicated: Damage this summer to pumps at the main water treatment facility made failure increasingly likely as the summer progressed, the governor said; and flooding of the Pearl River after heavy rains last week affected treatment processes and therefore the amount of running water the system can provide, Lumumba said.

This week’s troubles come as the water system has been plagued with problems for years and with the city already under a boil water notice since late July for what the state called a water-quality issue.

The state is “surging our resources to the city’s water treatment facility and beginning emergency maintenance, repairs and improvements,” Gov. Reeves said. “We will do everything in our power to restore water pressure and get water flowing back to the people of Jackson.”

Water for those in the state’s most populous city would have to be provided “for an unknown period of time,” Reeves said.

The water shortage is expected to last “the next couple of days,” according to the mayor’s office.

Lumumba also announced Monday the city’s public works director – a role that oversees the water treatment facilities – has been reassigned. Marlin King will instead serve as deputy director and Jordan Hillman, the city’s planning and development director, will be the interim public works director, according to Melissa Payne, the mayor’s spokesperson.

King did not respond to CNN requests for comment. Payne said King’s reassignment “is part of restructuring” and is not a result of the current water crisis.

Residents say faucet water is discolored

State Rep. Ronnie Crudup Jr. said he didn’t have running water Monday, but on Tuesday, discolored water came out of his faucet that he used to flush the toilet. He and his family used bottled water Tuesday morning to brush their teeth, Crudup told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.

Crudup said that although the city has experienced water issues in the past, rain played a part in the current water emergency.

“It’s been building up for years, but we have had an unprecedented amount of rain in the last two to three weeks, and it just kind of created this havoc, what we are dealing with right now,” he said.

Jackson resident Daryl Page told CNN he’s been searching for clean, bottled water since the city’s been under a boil water notice “for a whole month.” He was driving to a distribution site, but as he arrived, he noticed there was nothing there.

Firefighters and recruits for the Jackson Fire Department carry cases of bottled water to residents vehicles, August 18, 2022, as part of the city's response to longstanding water system problems. Rogelio V. Solis/AP

“Everyone is turning around because there is nothing here,” Page said, adding that his next plan of action was to drive to another site in hopes that he could find cases of water there.

Because of Monday’s failure, officials announced all Jackson public schools will shift to virtual learning Tuesday.

Hospitals are also feeling the strain. Jackson’s University of Mississippi Medical Center released a statement Tuesday saying the Jackson Medical Mall air conditioning is not functioning properly “because the water pressure feeding its chillers is too low.” Portable restrooms are being used in locations experiencing low water pressure, the statement said.

The university medical center statement also said a fire watch was declared for its Jackson-based facilities, “because fire suppression systems are fed by the city water system. Low pressure in the systems may cause them to be less effective.”

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the water crisis in Jackson and the White House has been “in regular contact with state and local officials, including Mayor Lumumba, and made clear that the Federal Government stands ready to offer assistance,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday afternoon.

“(The Federal Emergency Management Agency) is working closely with the state officials to identify needs, and the EPA is coordinating with industry partners to expedite delivery of critical treatment equipment for emergency repairs at the City of Jackson water treatment facilities,” she said.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency said “ensuring all people have access to healthy and safe water is a top priority.”

“We are in communication with officials in Mississippi and stand ready to provide support should the State request federal assistance,” the EPA statement read. “In the interim, we are available to provide technical support and information to Mississippi officials as they navigate their plan to address the immediate concerns at the O.B. Curtis Water Plant.”

Later Tuesday, the governor said FEMA has received the state’s declaration asking the federal government to declare the water shortage a federal emergency.

Water system issues go back decades, mayor says

The problem this week stems from one of two water treatment facilities in the city: the O.B. Curtis plant, which is run by the city of Jackson, according to the governor.

The main pumps at O.B. Curtis were severely damaged recently, and the facility began operating on smaller backup pumps about a month ago, around the time the latest boil water notice began in July, the governor said, without elaborating about the damage.

The governor said he was told Friday that “it was a near-certainty that Jackson would fail to produce running water sometime in the next several weeks or months if something did not materially improve,” the governor said.

The O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant in Jackson, Mississippi, seen on March 24, 2022. Mark Felix/AFP/Getty Images

But Lumumba said during a Monday news conference that it was only a matter time before the water system failed because Jackson’s water system has been faced serious issues for years.

“I have said on multiple occasions that it’s not a matter of ‘if’ our system would fail, but a matter of ‘when’ our system would fail,” the mayor said, adding that the city has been “going at it alone for the better part of two years” when it comes to the water crisis.

In early 2020, the water system failed an Environmental Protection Agency inspection. The agency wrote the drinking water had the potential to be host to harmful bacteria or parasites, based on observations of the water’s turbidity, or cloudiness, as well as “disinfection treatment concerns, and/or the condition of the distribution system.”

In March 2020, the EPA issued an order requiring the city to develop a plan to replace and repair monitoring and treatment equipment, to “address dosing processes for disinfection and pH control” and to take more coliform bacteria samples, among other things.

The city also has endured weather-related shutdowns.

In February 2021, a winter storm shut down Jackson’s entire water system, leaving tens of thousands of residents without water for a month amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Residents have been under some sort of boil water notice or advisory several times since that storm, including the state-ordered notice posted in July.

“We were here two Februarys ago when we had system failures, and the world was watching us and the world is watching us again,” Lumumba said during Monday’s news conference.

The mayor also pointed to recent flooding from the Pearl River as an event that triggered the latest water pressure issues.

Because O.B. Curtis received additional water from the reservoir during the flooding from last week to this week, the facility had to change the way it treats the water, which has led to the reduction of water being put out into the system and reduced tank levels. This is affecting the water pressure at residents’ homes, he said.

“As one crisis may be diverted, another one rears its head,” Lumumba said Monday during a news conference after addressing the flooding in the city.

O.B. Curtis is meant to provide about 50 million gallons for the city daily. The other plant, which usually provides about 20 million gallons daily, has been approved to ramp up its output amid the shortage, authorities said.

In July 2021, the EPA and the city entered into an agreement to address “long-term challenges and make needed improvements to the drinking water system.” The EPA recently announced $74.9 million in federal water and sewer infrastructure funds for Mississippi, mentioning Jackson without naming specific projects.

However, Lumumba has said it would take $2 billion to fully repair and replace the dated system, which city, state and federal officials say also has too much lead in its water in some places.

Lumumba declared a water system emergency Monday. The proclamation noted not only the flooding but also numerous previous “unsuccessful attempts to rectify water system issues.”

CNN meteorologist explains cause of water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi 02:27 - Source: CNN

As for restoring water pressure and flow and performing emergency maintenance and repairs, the state would split the cost with the city, Reeves said Tuesday.

“We will cash flow the operation, and the city will be responsible for half the cost of the emergency improvements that we make,” the governor said in a statement released on Twitter.

At a Tuesday news conference at the plant, Reeves said he is “encouraged” and at the same time “discouraged” by some of the news coming out of the facility.

“We do have a plan in place to potentially bring in an additional rented pump that will allow us to put at least 4 million gallons of water additionally, hopefully, which will be installed by tomorrow morning. That is progress and will help,” he said.

Reeves added there is no time frame as of now for safe drinking water, but that over the next 24 to 36 hours residents will see significant truckloads of clean water start to be delivered to Jackson.

Over the next few days, more than 108 semi-trucks of water are coming into Jackson and seven mega distribution sites will have 36 truckloads of water a day for the public to be able to retrieve, according to Lt. Col. Stephen McCraney, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency director.

Systemic issues also contributed to water crisis

Lumumba previously told CNN a lack of political will and years of neglect on a national level has prevented Jackson from getting the help it needs to fix its water and sewer crisis. Besides the infrastructure issues, the plant has also been faced with staffing issues, according to the mayor and governor.

“A far too small number of heroic frontline workers were trying their hardest to hold the system together, but that it was a near impossibility,” the governor said Monday.

Jackson’s ongoing water system problems already had some residents reporting low to no water pressure and raw sewage flowing in city streets and neighborhoods before this month.

Now, some residents are taking to Twitter – where #jxnwatercrisis and #jacksonwatercrisis were trending – to post pictures of buckets and even tubs full of brown water coming out of their drains.

Some on social media also pointed to systemic and environmental racism as among the causes of the city’s ongoing water issues and lack of resources, given that 82.5% of Jackson’s population identifies as Black or African American, according to census data, while the state’s legislature is majority White.

NAACP president Derrick Johnson called out the Mississippi governor on Twitter Tuesday.

”.@tatereeves, what are you waiting for!? We demand on behalf of the Jackson communities that you request federal aid from @FEMA and other agencies to ensure people have access to a basic human right: WATER,” Johnson’s tweet read. “Make the damn call. This is personal.”

Jackson has undergone drastic changes in the past half century. Its economic decline has occurred rapidly over the past two decades, fueled by population decline and demographic shifts.

The city’s population shrank from almost 200,000 in 1990 to about 160,000 in 2020. Its decline in population in these three decades was driven almost entirely by White flight. The city was 56% Black in 1990. By 2020, 82% of the city’s residents were Black.

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Jackson, Mississippi, mayor says he hopes water service can be ...

CNN —

As Mississippi’s capital faces a third day without reliable water service Wednesday – pushing some residents to stand in long lines for bottled water and keeping schools and businesses closed – the mayor says he hopes water service can be restored this week.

The problem came to a head Monday, when river flooding nudged an already-hobbling main treatment plant to failure, meaning Jackson couldn’t necessarily produce enough water to flush toilets or even fight fires, officials say. The water system has been troubled for years and the city already was under a boil-water notice since late July.

Officials “are optimistic that we can see water restored to our residents within this week” in the city of roughly 150,000 residents, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba told CNN Wednesday.

“There is a huge mountain to climb in order to achieve that,” he said. Crews “are working persistently to restore the pressure, to refill the tanks across the city,” Lumumba said.

Gov. Tate Reeves tweeted Wednesday that an emergency rental pump that will pump an additional 4 million gallons of water is being installed at Jackson’s water facility.

“More to be done, but the work is happening at an incredible pace!,” Reeves tweeted.

The governor also declared an emergency and activated the National Guard to help distribute bottled water, and said he sent resources for urgent repairs and maintenance at the plant. Some service already has improved, and truckloads of water are coming for distribution to the public, officials said.

President Joe Biden, who signed a major disaster declaration Tuesday triggering assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spoke to Lumumba on Wednesday to discuss emergency efforts, the White House said.

Lumumba said Wednesday that he spoke extensively with Biden and separately with Harris about the situation in Jackson.

“Both assured me that the eyes of Washington are watching the city of Jackson. They wanted us to know that we should expect the full arm of support from the federal government in every way that they possibly can,” mayor said. “And they assured me their support was going to be demonstrated through long-range and long-term efforts through the EPA.”

Cars line up as water is distributed at New Jerusalem Church in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 31. Austin Steele/CNN

Advocates have previously pointed to systemic and environmental racism as among the causes of Jackson’s ongoing water issues and lack of resources to address them. About 82.5% of Jackson’s population identifies as Black or African American, according to census data, while the state’s legislature is majority White.

The water system has suffered from “deferred maintenance over three decades or more,” and the city will need funding help to catch up, Lumumba said earlier this week.

Water crisis upends nearly all aspects of Jackson

While local, state and federal agencies are trying to mitigate the water crisis, it is still upending nearly all aspects of life in the city, where public schools shifted to virtual learning Tuesday.

Cassandra Welchlin, a mother of three, told CNN her kids are out of school and they’ve had to buy water to cook, brush their teeth and for other basic necessities.

Brown water has been running from her taps, said Welchlin, executive director of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable.

“We still would not use that water. We don’t boil it to do anything with it because grit is in the water,” she said. “It’s a really bad public safety issue.”

A photo of a bathtub in a Jackson home shows how brown the water can get when coming out of the faucet. courtesy Daryl Page

Local businesses are also struggling to stay afloat, Dan Blumenthal and his partner Jeff E. Good, who own Broad Street Bakery & Cafe, BRAVO! Italian restaurant and bar and Sal and Mookie’s New York Pizza and Ice Cream Shop, told CNN.

All three businesses are owned by the management company Mangia Bene Restaurant Management Group Inc.

Blumenthal said the restaurants were able to recover after Covid-19, but the current water crisis has brought on similar staffing issues. Tanya Burns, who has managed BRAVO! for the last 12 years, told CNN that she has seen a 10% to 20% decrease in foot traffic since the boiling water advisory started four weeks ago.

“It feels like Covid to me with the way things are going,” Blumenthal said. “We had to let all of our staff go after Covid and now we’re not letting them go but we’re worried they’ll jump ship and go to another county where they can make money.”

The most affected business sector is the city’s hospitality industry, said Jeff Rent, president and CEO at Greater Jackson Chamber Partnership.

“Hotels and restaurants, already on thin margins, either cannot open or they have to make special accommodations including the purchase of ice, water and soft drinks,” Rent said.

Chairs are seen on tables at Brent's Drugs diner in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 31. Austin Steele/CNN

Even the process of distributing bottled water to residents has had difficulties. At a distribution event Tuesday at Hawkins Field Airport, residents waited in a line more than a mile long – and some were turned away when the site ran out of its 700 cases of water in just two hours.

Some stores ran thin of supplies. Jackson resident Jeraldine Watts was able to snag some of the last water bottle cases at a grocery store Monday, she told CNN. She and her family have been using bottled or boiled tap water for everything, including cooking and washing dishes.

“I keep saying we’re going to be the next Michigan,” Watts said, “and it looks like that’s exactly what we’re headed for.”

Watts was referring to Flint, Michigan, which was hit with a water crisis around 2015 when tainted drinking water containing lead and other toxins was detected in homes and residents reported children suffering from mysterious illnesses.

Corean Wheeler, who picked up a case of water at a local church, said she feels “disenfranchised” by the city’s water crisis.

“You don’t even want to wash your hands in this water,” said Wheeler, 72. “You can’t drink it, you can’t cook with it, you can’t even give it to your pet. We are constantly paying water bills and we can’t use the water. We feel like we are living in a third world country in America and that’s kind of bad.”

Jackson’s University of Mississippi Medical Center said air conditioning at one facility is not functioning properly because of low water pressure, and portable restrooms are being used at other facilities.

Water crisis interrupts campus life at JSU

At Jackson State University, there is “low to no water pressure at all campus locations,” and water is being delivered to students, officials said. The university’s head football coach, Deion Sanders, said its football program is in “crisis mode.”

Sophomore Erin Washington told CNN, “It’s like we’re living in a nightmare right now.” Washington has already booked her flight home to Chicago.

“The water would be brown and kind of smell like sewage water,” said JSU freshman Jaylyn Clarke, who decided to go back home to New Orleans until the water situation is resolved.

The university is working to make provisions for the 2,000 students who live on campus, university president Thomas K. Hudson told CNN on Wednesday. Portable showers and toilets have been set up across campus and classes were virtual for the week.

Hudson said Jackson State has a stash of drinking water that it keeps for emergencies. The university is also bringing in clean water to keep the chillers operating for air conditioning in the dorms, Hudson said.

“It’s their frustration that I’m concerned about,” Hudson said. “It’s the fact that this is interrupting their learning. So what we try to do is really focus on how we can best meet their needs.”

What happened, and what officials say is being done

Though Jackson has seen numerous water issues over the years, acute problems cascaded since at least late July, when the state imposed a boil-water notice for Jackson after high levels of turbidity, or cloudiness, were noticed at the city’s O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant. The cloudiness carries higher chances that the water could contain disease-causing organisms, the city said.

Around the same time, the main pumps at O.B. Curtis – the city’s main treatment plant – were severely damaged, forcing the facility to operate on smaller backup pumps, Reeves said this week without elaborating on the damage. The city announced August 9 that the troubled pumps were being pulled offline.

A security guard is seen outside of O.B. Curtis Water Plant on August 31. Austin Steele/CNN

The governor said he was told Friday that “it was a near-certainty that Jackson would fail to produce running water sometime in the next several weeks or months if something did not materially improve.”

Then, flooding: Heavy rains last week pushed the Pearl River to overflow and flood some Jackson streets, cresting Monday.

O.B. Curtis received additional water from a reservoir because of the flooding, and that changed the way the plant treated the water, causing the plant to produce even less than it was, and that severely lowered the water pressure across the city, Lumumba said Monday.

Some improvements have been made at the plant, but more is needed, state officials have said.

On Tuesday, the plant was pumping about 30 million gallons of a day; it is rated to pump about 50 million gallons a day, Jim Craig, director of health protection at the state health department, told reporters Tuesday.

Reeves previewed the installation Tuesday night, saying a rented pump “will allow us to put at least 4 million gallons” more into the system.

“That is progress and will help,” Reeves said Tuesday. It wasn’t immediately clear how long the installation would take or how soon it could impact the city’s water flow.

Reeves has said the state would split the cost of emergency repairs with the city.

On Wednesday, an additional pump was installed at the plant, Lumumba said. Despite some issues with water pressure – which is measured in pounds per square inch (psi) – on Tuesday night, the mayor said the city expects water pressure to increase Wednesday night.

“The goal is to get psi on the surface system to 87psi,” Lumumba said, explaining the pressure at midnight was 40psi.

The mayor is still asking residents to continue boiling water.

“It is safe to take baths in, it is safe to wash your hands. However, if you are drinking or cooking with it, we ask you to boil that water. If you’re washing the dishes, we ask that you boil the water in that circumstance to make certain that it is safe for you,” he said.

An aerial view of the O.B. Curtis Water Plant on August 31. Eric Cox/Reuters

Malcolm Pickett lifts a case of water outside of New Jerusalem Church in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 31. Austin Steele/CNN

As a fuller solution, Lumumba has said it would take $2 billion to fully repair and replace the dated water and sewer systems, and that’s money the city isn’t close to having.

“I have said on multiple occasions that it’s not a matter of ‘if’ our system would fail, but a matter of ‘when’ our system would fail,” the mayor said Tuesday, adding that the city has been “going at it alone for the better part of two years” when it comes to the water crisis.

Lumumba added that there will be water distributions across the city Monday through Friday starting at 5 p.m., Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m..

“The city of Jackson has brought in tankers to distribute non-potable water to residents in need. Residents are asked to bring a container, such as a garbage can or a cooler to store the water. This is not water to be consumed, this is the water for sanitary needs of flushing toilets and things of that nature,” the mayor said.

Beginning Thursday, seven mega distribution sites with 36 truckloads of water will be available each a day for the public, Lt. Col. Stephen McCraney, director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said Tuesday.

Corporations like Anheuser-Busch, Walmart and Save A Lot, as well as volunteer organizations are also donating water to the city, McCraney added.

The city is also providing flushing water, Jackson City Councilman Aaron Banks told CNN.

“One of the first things that we realized is that people need to be able to flush, because that becomes a problem as far as making sure that people have that quality of life that they need,” he said.

“At the end of the day, we need a fix and the same attention that was given to Flint, Michigan, we need that same attention given to Jackson,” Banks said.

A local church is also helping to distribute water in the meantime. At New Jerusalem Church in southwest Jackson, Malcolm Pickett was seen Wednesday loading cases of water from a trailer into trunks and backseats. He announced on social media earlier he’d be giving out water at the church led by his father Pastor Dwayne K. Pickett.

“They are scared to use the water and that’s the biggest thing,” Malcolm Pickett said. “We are all about helping people.”

Malcolm Pickett loads water into a resident's car outside of New Jerusalem Church in Jackson, Mississippi, on August 31. Austin Steele/CNN

At Jackson State, some students are raising money to buy water for Jackson residents in need, and have created a hotline that those residents can call to ask for help.

Maise Brown, 20, a junior at Jackson State, organized the group of about 20 students, called Mississippi Student Water Crisis Advocacy Team. The group launched a social media campaign Tuesday to raise money and to publicize the hotline.

As of Wednesday morning, the group raised about $2,000 and received about 10 calls asking for help.

“We had disabled residents calling us … for help,” Brown said. “We also had people who live outside the city call us and ask us to help their elderly parents.”

The group plans to knock on the doors of homes, hoping to reach people who might not see its social media campaign, Brown said.

Long-standing issues at troubled water system

Jackson’s water system has been faced serious issues for years.

In early 2020, the Jackson water system failed an Environmental Protection Agency inspection, which found the drinking water had the potential to be host to harmful bacteria or parasites.

In February 2021, a severe winter storm hit, freezing and bursting pipes and leaving many residents without water for a month.

“Since that time, there has not been a month where we have not experienced no-flow to low-flow in certain areas in south Jackson, and so it’s very frustrating,” Banks, the city councilman, told CNN.

In July 2021, the EPA and the city entered into an agreement to address “long-term challenges and make needed improvements to the drinking water system.” The EPA also recently announced $74.9 million in federal water and sewer infrastructure funds for Mississippi.

Davos: Damon focused on clean water for world

Kim Hjelmgaard

USA TODAY

Nearly 1B lack safe%2C consistent way of getting water

Matt Damon at Switzerland forum to discuss problem

%27Just so unthinkable%2C%27 actor says

DAVOS, Switzerland — The Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon is dealing with two issues here at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. One is a trivial byproduct of the frenetic and high-paced networking that underpins this gathering of the world's global elite. The other is a matter of life and death.

The trivial first.

"I was at a dinner surrounded by all these incredible people, and when I turned to the guy next to me and asked him what he did (for a living), he said he was the prime minister of Finland," the star of the Bourne film series told USA TODAY on Thursday, clearly bemused that he failed to recognize a head of state.

Now the serious issue.

"It's just so unthinkable to those of us who grew up in America or Canada that anybody could ever lack access to clean water," said Damon, 43, who has traveled to this stunning Alpine setting close to the borders of Austria and Italy to talk about a seemingly mundane, yet frustratingly deadly problem.

Nearly 1 billion people lack a safe and consistent way of getting water, and one-third of the world's population — 2.5 billion people — don't have regular access to sanitation facilities. More people have a cellphone than have a toilet, and every 20 seconds, a child dies for lack of access to clean water and sanitation, according to Water.org, the non-profit that Damon founded with Gary White, a widely praised engineer and social entrepreneur who has been active in the water field for more than two decades.

"Years ago, I took a side trip to the slums of Guatemala City and was blown away by the kids collecting contaminated water, and the sewage there, so I started learning more about the problem and realized that with water, I could match up my interest in engineering with social justice," said White, also in Davos this week.

The water crisis is a problem that has many fronts, and organizations devoted to finding solutions favor different approaches, says David Winder, chief executive of WaterAid, a fellow firm in the field. Some groups are more explicitly engaged in hands-on engineering, while others are geared more heavily toward advocacy.

Industry expert's say that Water.org's point of differentiation is that it has a micro-finance program that is neither aid nor subsidization. Instead, it's a credit program that encourages people in emerging markets such as India, where the need is greatest, to pay for water delivery systems — often, wells and pipes — that it helps to create and install. The idea is modeled on the pioneering micro-finance ideas of Muhammad Yunus.

"Everybody's got a different reason to be interested on water in terms of security and scarcity. Our interest (Water.org's) is in access to it," Damon said.

He said that 250,000 people have gone through Water.org's credit program, in most cases borrowing around $150, and that 97% of those loans have been repaid. Water.org recently launched an investment fund that will seek to raise capital that can then be used for micro-loans.

"Gary and Matt are very aware of the importance of designing systems that can be managed by the local community," said WaterAid's Winder.

The water crisis is a major topic at this year's WEF and ranked third in the WEF's top 10 global risks for 2014.

In reply to a question about what gets done during Davos week, Damon said: "It's better to have these conventions where these issues are put on the table than not. Coming to a place like this, it's undeniable that we are all sharing the same world. Serious discussions are taking place, so hopefully, serious things will get done."

White chipped in: "Without being too presumptuous, it's about bringing the poor to the table. They are the ones dying every day for lack of clean water."

Damon's interest and commitment to the issue appears beyond dispute. "This is my one hobby outside of making films," he said Thursday in Davos. "It's my other job."

He said he did not know exactly how much time he spends working for Water.org, but he suspected that it was at least 10%. "It comes in bursts," he said. "It's not really possible to do a quick trip to India."

Speaking to USA TODAY on the sidelines of the WEF on Thursday, Richard Branson, the British serial entrepreneur behind the various Virgin companies including Virgin Galactic spaceflights, said: "I think it is wonderful that Matt Damon is using his profile and connections to campaign on this important issue. I also hope he is continuing his toilet strike," a reference to a humorous -- yet masking a serious point -- pledge that Damon made in February last year saying he would not use the bathroom until the world's water crisis was solved.

Branson also made the pledge.

In a USA TODAY brokered riposte, Damon said Thursday that he saw Branson coming out of a Davos men's room.

"Film stars are often in the fortunate position of being able to offer their help on any number of issues affecting the world, and sometimes, they scatter themselves too widely," said WaterAid's Winder. "But Damon's had a very admirable focus on water, and you'd have to say the industry as a whole is grateful."

You'd also have to say he has a pretty persuasive argument on his side.

"HIV/ AIDS or cancer research, it's easier to connect personally to those things because we all know people who have been afflicted by those," Damon said. "The fact that 2 million children are dying every year (because of the water crisis), it's almost something that doesn't make sense to us intellectually, because they are dying of completely preventable diseases. (Clean water) is something that we solved in the West a hundred years ago.

"Imagine if we cured HIV/ AIDS tomorrow, and in a hundred years, people were still dying from it," he said.

Egypt faces acute water shortage, but it's still building a giant 'Green ...

Editor’s Note: A version of this article appears in Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

CNN —

On the easternmost outskirts of Cairo, the Egyptian government is building a giant belt of lakes and parks deep in the desert. Creators call it the “Green River” and say that when finished, the ornamental ribbon will cut through Egypt’s brand new, ultra-modern metropolis: its New Administrative Capital.

A digital simulation shows the “river” extending throughout the length of the New Capital, as it is commonly known, branching out into smaller lakes and pools.

The sleek video shown off five years ago by Egypt’s prime minister depicts lush riverbanks dotted with trees and occupying vast landscapes of greenery – even though the site is in the middle of a desert, with no natural sources of water nearby.

Just how the government plans to source the vast amounts of water for the project is unclear.

The oasis is being constructed in the middle of a worsening climate crisis. And as temperatures rise and the population balloons, water scarcity has become a critical concern for Egypt, host of this year’s COP27 climate summit, which began Sunday in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Universal access to clean water is Egypt’s top priority at the meeting, with a planning minister recently stating that the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development would not be fully realized if water equality wasn’t prioritized.

Egyptian authorities have repeatedly sounded alarms over the country’s water problems.

In May, the Minister of Local Development announced that the country had entered a stage of “water poverty” according to UN standards. The UN doesn’t have a metric for “water poverty,” but by its definition a country is considered water scarce when annual supplies drop below 1,000 cubic meters per capita, which the minister reported was the case.

And just last month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the country’s water resources could no longer meet the needs of the rapidly growing population, noting that his government is nonetheless taking strategic steps to conserve equal water supply. Sisi also announced that he is launching a new initiative called “Water Adaptation and Resilience” in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) at COP27.

See how Cairo expanded between 1984 and 2020

Sources: Egypt's Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities; Google Earth

Cairo’s population has more than doubled over the past four decades, and so the city has expanded. Egypt’s “New Administrative Capital” is being built over a 714 square kilometer (276 sq. mi.) site and, once completed, will house 6.5 million people.

Most of Egypt’s population, which now stands at 104 million, is crowded along the narrow Nile river.

In July, Egypt’s submission to the UN Framework on Climate Change revealed that its water resources only amount to about 60 billion cubic meters annually, nearly all of which comes from the Nile. But with the population increasing by one person every 19 seconds, Egypt needs an estimated 114 billion cubic meters of water per year, forcing the country to bridge the gap with groundwater, rainfall and treated wastewater.

“Our water sources are limited,” Saker El Nour, an Egyptian sociologist who researches agrarian issues, rural poverty and the environment in Arab countries, told CNN. “We are in a dry area, and so we don’t have enough rain and our main source of water is the Nile.”

“This will get worse with climate change,” he added.

Experts say the Egyptian government’s own water management strategies are contributing to its pressing water crisis. As authorities warn of water scarcity, experts say that tens of billions of dollars are being squandered on projects that waste – as opposed to conserve – the precious natural resource, particularly Egypt’s megaprojects in the desert.

Egypt's brand new city is being built from scratch in the middle of the desert. Abd El Ghany/Reuters

Designed to mimic the Nile River

The Green River project is one such venture.

The artificial body of water is meant to mimic the Nile and become a key centerpiece of the New Capital project.

The giant system of lakes, canals and gardens connecting the New Capital’s different neighborhoods is designed to be 35 kilometres long and encompass what Egypt says will be “the largest park in the world,” extending over a 10-kilometer area. Costs for the first phase were estimated at $500 million, state media reported in 2019. The project also includes two giant manmade lakes, the first of which has been built, according to state media.

CNN has been unable to verify how much of the Green River project has been constructed to date, but in June authorities said the first phase of the New Capital was more than 70% complete.

Google Earth images show large swathes of greenery stretched across the desert and a giant, manmade lake, which appears to be full of water.

The New Capital is designed for a population of 6.5 million people. To put that in perspective, some 20 million people are crammed into highly congested Greater Cairo.

Sleek promotional material produced by the government paints a picture of a lush city nestled in the middle of the desert. It promises a sprawling government district, thousands of new homes, an entertainment district and even a zoo with an aquarium featuring dolphin performances.

But as the government spearheads its luxurious project, the average farmer struggles to find enough water to sustain small plots of land, which for many represent their main source of income.

An Egyptian farmer takes part in wheat harvest in Bamha village near al-Ayyat town in Giza province. Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

An aerial view of Minya al-Qamh agricultural region in Sharqiyah province. Amir Makar/AFP/Getty Images

When every drop of water counts

Further down the river Nile in Egypt’s Minya governorate, around 250 kilometers south of Cairo, farmers huddle around a thin stream of canal water, drawing water to irrigate their land.

Twenty-six-year-old Romany Sami is one of those farmers. Along with his father and brother, Sami owns 10 feddans of land – around 10 acres – and is currently planting wheat and onions.

Sami says that water is not consistently available. The supply is intermittent in order to allow everyone a chance to irrigate.

“People stay up all night waiting for the water to arrive. We don’t sleep at home most days because of the water. I need to work continuously for two or three days before the water dries up,” Sami told CNN.

Sami’s farmland lies on a small canal running between different plots of land and fed by the Nile. The farmer says that those cultivating longstanding farmland on one side of the canal are allowed to use Nile water for irrigation, but those farming newly planted reclaimed desert land on the other side are prohibited from doing so, simply because there is not enough water.

People stay up all night waiting for the water to arrive. We don’t sleep at home most days because of the water. Romany Sami, an Egyptian farmer

Farmers, including Sami, who can’t draw on the waters of the Nile, are forced to use groundwater for irrigation.

“Reclaimed lands are not allowed to irrigate with Nile water, and they have to use wells, which are more expensive,” said Hussein Abdel Rahman, head of Egypt’s Farmers’ Syndicate, “so people resort to stealing water and they are subjected to fines, and the matter may even lead to imprisonment.”

From time to time, says Sami, authorities pass by and impose fines on farmers caught using Nile water. Desperation drives Sami and others to do so anyway.

But Minya is only one of many farming regions struggling to find water to grow their crops.

Some 100 kilometers southwest of Cairo in the village of Tamiya in Fayoum, 63-year-old farmer Ahmed Abd Rabbo has seen the yields of his hard work collapse amid the water shortage.

Living with his family of 25 in a three-story house, Abd Rabbo, says he can no longer rely on his wheat field as a primary source of income.

His plot sits at the end of a canal, and he says it often runs dry by the time he needs to irrigate his wheat.

“Those who stand at the end of the queue get nothing if the need is great,” Abd Rabbo told CNN.

When there isn’t enough water in the canal, Abd Rabbo uses wastewater. While the farmer says he is grateful that there is at least some water year-round, he says wastewater negatively affects the quality and quantity of his crops.

“But better one-eyed than stone-blind,” he said.

Workers feed harvested wheat into a thresher on a farm in Rahma Village in Fayoum. Islam Safwat/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Adel Yacoub, a 50-year-old Egyptian farmer, works a field in the village of Gabal al-Tayr. Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

The Egyptian government says it’s running a number of projects aimed at conserving water and maximizing its use. One such initiative, launched by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in 2021, is seeking to rehabilitate canals with the aim of improving water management and distribution.

Egypt says it is also working with its people to improve irrigation methods, implement efficient farming techniques, and eliminate pollution.

The government is already limiting the planting of water-intensive crops such as rice.

But Egypt’s water shortage problems also stem from mismanagement, as well as a lack of equal distribution, rural sociologist El Nour said, adding that the issue tends to be overlooked in the government’s narrative.

And while Cairo cites rising global temperatures, shore erosion, and the melting of glaciers as key challenges to securing enough water for its booming population, it also points to Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia has been under construction since 2011. Ethiopia started to fill the reservoir behind the dam in 2020, and it remains a major point of tension between the two countries.

Ethiopia completed the third phase of filling in August, which Egypt has rejected as “unilateral action.”

Ethiopia said it has taken into consideration Egypt and Sudan’s needs when constructing and operating the dam. But it is seen by Egypt and Sudan as an existential threat to their limited water supply.

Workers drive past a banner with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the New Administrative Capital. Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

Where is the water coming from?

State media reported last year that the New Capital plans to use water treatment plants to supply the Green River project, rather than fresh water from the Nile.

But analysts are skeptical about both the source of water used and the sustainability of the project itself.

“There is a logical question that needs to be asked: How are these water treatment plants operational in a city that is not yet inhabited?” said El Nour, who studies water use in agriculture.

In a 2018 interview with Sky News Arabia, spokesman Khaled El-Husseiny said two pumping stations would transfer fresh water from the Nile to the New Capital, adding that the New Capital currently relies on those stations and that they were completed “to a large extent.”

Each station is designed to pump around 125,000 cubic meters of Nile water per day, El-Husseiny told Sky News Arabiya.

Given that the pumping stations are the only water source that “we are sure have reached the New Capital,” El Nour raises the question whether fresh water rather than treated wastewater could be being used for the Green River project.

Despite reaching out to Egyptian authorities, CNN has not been able to verify the sources of water used for the Green River project. El-Husseiny, the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and the government’s foreign press center did not respond to repeated requests for information.

But Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry insists Egyptians “are not complaining of the government’s management and its provision of their needs.”

Speaking to CNN’s Becky Anderson on the sidelines of the COP27 summit on Monday, Shoukry stressed that issues of water scarcity and water security are paramount in this year’s talks, and that his government has spent large amounts of money on water conservation initiatives that assure fair and equal distribution.

“With regards to what Egypt is doing, it never seems to meet the approval of some,” Shoukry added. “If we do not create new cities for our people that are growing at a very large rate and alternative dwellings, then we are deficient; but if we do, then we are squandering,” he said.

“We wish we could do more,” he told CNN, “But we do so within the resources [available] and we direct our resources toward the benefit of our people.”

Water scarcity is a global issue and not one particular to Egypt, said Nabeel Elhady, a professor at Cairo University who has been studying the country’s water challenges for several years. But the lack of transparency with regards to data collection and data sharing in Egypt makes it difficult for water experts to assess both the extent and root causes of water scarcity in the country, he added.

“We need to of course know more, but I imagine that the authorities are worried because this information can sometimes make it seem like they are not doing enough on their end,” Elhady told CNN.

Better access to information would, however, help both authorities and experts improve solutions to the problem, he said.

Egypt says the new city is needed to accomodate its rapidly growing population. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

The Egyptian government has been touting the New Administrative Capital as an ultra-modern, green city. Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

Megaprojects during an economic crunch

Egypt’s megaprojects in the desert may put further strain on already scarce resources, analysts say.

It has been building new cities for decades, with multiple generations of new urban projects expanding far into the desert surrounding Cairo. Egypt’s New Capital is the latest of these projects, and one of the largest.

“This is a central problem, and water is at the heart of it,” said Elhady.

The arid ecosystem that currently exists in Egypt is not designed to be filled with lakes and gardens, he said, adding that “creating artificial life and transferring water to it is 100% unsustainable.”

Like much of the world, Egypt is also struggling to cope with the economic impact of the war in Ukraine, on which it is normally heavily reliant for grain imports. The IMF confirmed a $3 billion loan to Egypt just last month, as authorities seek to keep the economy afloat amid a fall in the value of its currency and soaring inflation. But even before this latest loan, Egypt already owed more than $52 billion to different “multilateral institutions,” according to a 2022 Central Bank report, with close to half of that borrowed from the IMF.

But while authorities are warning of water scarcity and economic challenges brought on by the war in Ukraine, megaprojects deemed unnecessary by some are in full swing.

“The contradiction is really extremely clear and very strange to listen to as well,” said Maged Mandour, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

COP 27 as an opportunity for change?

For al-Sisi, water scarcity is a top priority that needs to be addressed at the COP27 summit and “a matter of national security” for his country.

But at the same time, the New Administrative Capital – a hallmark of the legacy he aims to leave behind – is accused of squandering the very resource he is battling to protect.

Analysts disagree about what the climate summit can do to address this apparent contradiction.

Mandour sees the COP 27 summit as a way for the government to “greenwash” its climate change record and continue with its prized megaprojects, despite the outcry.

“It is clear greenwashing,” he told CNN. “There is no avenue for a discussion about this.”

Others view the conference as a chance for Egypt to look inward, to speak openly about its shortcomings and find solutions through negotiations with both the local and international community.

“I see COP27 as an opportunity for the environmental issues that are generally silenced to be discussed,” said El Nour.

CNN has repeatedly reached out to Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative of COP27, about whether these issues will be brought to the discussion table during the summit. Like many other officials, Aboulmagd did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Addressing world leaders at the climate summit on Sunday, al-Sisi stressed that funding is needed to support developing countries who “today are suffering more than others from the consequences of these [climate change] crises,” especially on the African continent. He also called on leaders to come together and make this “the summit of implementation.”

“We are running out of time,” he said, “Only a few years are left in this crucial decade, and we must take advantage of them.”

For those who depend for their lives and livelihood on the dwindling waters of the Nile, the stakes could not be higher.

'Water is a human right': City of Jackson still in dire need of ...

CNN —

Laurie Bertram Roberts walks 3 miles down a nearby hill to the store to fill up her 5-gallon jug with filtered water. The mother of seven makes the trip every week to make sure she has 1 gallon for each family member.

She stopped counting the boil water notices since they can happen at least three times a month. The longtime resident of Jackson, Mississippi, has been drinking filtered and bottled water for years due to scarce or dirty water. She doesn’t use the town’s water for drinking, bathing or cooking.

A year ago, a winter storm shut down Jackson’s entire water system, leaving tens of thousands of residents without water for a month in the middle of a pandemic. That only made matters worse for Betram Roberts, who had to buy baby wipes, extra underwear, disposable plates and microwaveable food – necessities she resorts to when she knows her family will be without clean water.

When she knew she was going to be without water for a while, Betram Roberts became concerned for her twins, who have autism and eczema head to toe. She was scared that the little dirty water she had access to would get into a skin crack or open sore on their skin. She then decided to take the 27-year-old twins almost three hours away to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a couple of weeks.

“I think the fact that our water has become something that we joke about a lot, tells you a lot about where we are at,” she told CNN. “It’s become this running commentary that is just so ubiquitous, and you don’t really think about how messed up that is. Water is a human right.”

Betram Roberts has been making the trip to fill her jug for several years now because of her hesitancy to use the city’s water. It has become so normal to her that it’s now part of a weekly routine and has become a necessity. It’s a matter of survival for her and her family even though she says it has become a joke to others.

Residents like Betram Roberts paint a picture of how this city of more than 151,000 people has been forced to deal with a water crisis as well as a pandemic. After the storm last year, leaders of the majority Black community begged the state for $47 million for water and sewer repairs, but the legislature gave them only $3 million. The Environmental Protection Agency also recently announced $74.9 million in federal water and sewer infrastructure funds for Mississippi. However, the mayor says it would take $2 billion to fully repair and replace the dated system that has too much lead in its water.

Town administrations have dealt with this issue since the 1900s. The town’s first African American mayor, Harvey Johnson, held office for two terms and faced the challenges of poverty, a loss of population and a lack of federal and state resources. Even with his efforts to mitigate these circumstances, Jackson’s water system was still a concern at the end of his term in 2005 and still is four mayors later. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba took office in 2017.

Although Lumumba says he is aware of the ongoing challenges, residents continue to report low to no water pressure and raw sewage flowing in city streets and neighborhoods. Jackson residents say they have been boiling their water to make it safe and traveling to cities like Braxton, 30 minutes away, to buy bottled water. This has highlighted Jackson’s outdated and neglected water infrastructure, which community leaders and experts say is connected to environmental racism. The city is about 82% Black and 17% White.

Lumumba told CNN a lack of political will and years of neglect on a national level has prevented Jackson from getting the help it needs to fix its water and sewer crisis.

“We’re going to take every bit of money that we can get to contribute to the problem,” Lumumba said. “There’s a lack of understanding of the challenges that happen in Jackson. We’re going to keep beating the drum and making it clear that this is going to require a more substantial investment.”

Jackson resident, Bettie Wilder opened the door for city councilman and State Rep. De'Keither Stamps as he brought an ice chest filled with potable water to her home last year. Rogelio V. Solis/AP

Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, advocates for rural communities of color who are facing environmental challenges and believes environmental racism is at play in Jackson.

“It really changes the way we operate,” Flowers said. “It also means that those people that can’t afford bottled water are put in a position where they can’t wash their hands on a regular basis like they should. And now with diseases like Covid, it is very important that you have access to water because water is a part of sanitation. It really makes people far more vulnerable.”

Flowers told CNN the impact of not having access to clean water is especially detrimental to lower-income communities that don’t have the money or resources to ensure they have clean water. About 25% of Jackson residents are in poverty compared to the national poverty rate of about 11%, and people are already disadvantaged. It’s often difficult for them to find transportation or money to obtain clean water.

Flowers said cities like Jackson are an example of “benign neglect” from those in power.

“I am concerned that it’s just another symbol of what I call one of the relatives of the Confederacy where communities that need help are not given the help, especially if they’re marginalized or communities of color,” she told CNN.

Many residents are left to face the long-term effects of an aging water system that lacks a supportive and strong foundation.

On rainy days, James Hopkins sets a bucket outside to collect water. When it doesn’t rain, the Jackson resident spends about $80 per week on bottled water to drink, bathe, brush his teeth and cook. On top of this, he still pays his water bill but hardly turns on his faucet.

When he showers with the water from the city, he says he is sometimes left with an itchy feeling on his skin, so he mainly resorts to bathing with fresh spring water from the supermarket. Hopkins has never trusted Jackson’s water.

“This water issue needs to be tackled constantly,” Hopkins said. “We can’t wait until the next storm or flood to say we have water issues.”

The marginalization and disinvestment of Black communities are intentional and therefore come as no surprise, according to Yvette Carnell, president and CEO of the American Descendants of Slavery Advocacy Foundation. She believes a water system with a fragile foundation is bigger than Jackson and is often common for Black rural communities.

Madonna Manor maintenance supervisor Lamar Jackson, left, stacked bottled water brought by Mac Epps of Mississippi Move last year. Rogelio V. Solis/AP

“We have an infrastructure crisis in this country and, given the history of this country, it should come as no surprise that Black communities are the most starved for resources,” she told CNN. “Our needs are never prioritized when it’s time to fund new pipelines and thus, our communities fall into disrepair.”

Jackson is also facing fiscal constraints because of a population decline of more than 3,000 people and the city currently generates less tax revenue and overall economic activity. Its population has been declining since 2011.

An ongoing decline in tax revenue gives the town less financial resources to maintain and improve a public water system that was built for a larger population, according to John Green, director of the Southern Rural Development Center.

Green told CNN that a one-time allocation of funds will not be enough to improve Jackson’s infrastructure, but it will take a large investment, strategic planning, sufficient staffing and innovation.

Jackson’s plight is an echo of the Flint, Michigan water crisis, another majority Black community that has struggled with its water since 2014. With a Black population of about 54%, Flint has grappled with aging pipes, lead contamination in its water, and a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak.

Since 2014, Flint has seen progress including low lead levels in the city’s water, funding from the EPA and a compensation fund that will provide direct payments to Flint residents.

“Flint has rebuilt their water plan and improved their lead levels, and they’re moving forward from the past, whereas we kind of don’t see exactly where our situation is going to remedy,” Sheryl Bacon, research associate and analyst at the Mississippi Urban Research Center at Jackson State University said.

Mayor Lumumba recognizes a pattern of neglect toward Jackson and says the lack of investment is intentional, as the state and federal governments are aware of Jackson’s challenges but don’t act to fully address the crisis. He said Jackson must attain an equitable water distribution system to see any kind of progress that Flint has, but state leaders refuse to help and have left Jackson to deal with the crisis by itself.

Recent report recommends ways to address crisis

A recent report from the Mississippi Urban Research Center examined the Jackson water crisis from past and present perspectives to make research-based recommendations on efforts for the future.

Jennifer Cattenhead shows a cooler with non-potable water she had to use for flushing last year in Jackson, Mississippi. Rory Doyle/Reuters

The report – “Implications of the 2021 Jackson Water Crisis: Past, Present, and Future” – focuses on trends and changes in residential population, property tax revenues in the city of Jackson over the years and the effect that privatizing a public water system would have on the town. The authors recommend policy options including improved efforts to collect water bills and a push to create a new agency for enhanced interlocal government collaboration.

Dr. Isiah Marshall, an editor of the report and associate dean of Jackson State University’s School of Social Work, told CNN that environmental racism is at play in Jackson and is based on economic, social and historical factors.

“One of the things that this particular journal taught us is how we have to now mobilize people and communities to take some court of responsibility or knowing what to do to ensure that the most vulnerable are not suffering to these types of issues,” he said.

The report revealed that town officials must not only secure money to repair infrastructure, but they also must prepare cities to ensure that crises like Jackson’s won’t have such a negative impact.

“We need to be progressive in our thinking, and forward and focus as we approach environmental responsibility and sustainability,” Sheryl Bacon, an author of the report and research associate and analyst at the Mississippi Urban Research Center at Jackson State University told CNN.

The report also revealed that Jackson’s high concentration of low-wage jobs, renters and impoverished families affect access to water infrastructure. Bacon said it’s important to note that much of the Jackson community has struggled with financial barriers, not only to water, but to internet access and several other qualities of life factors.

What comes next?

Mayor Lumumba’s short-term goal for the city is to identify a means to stabilize Jackson’s water treatment facilities and pinpoint solutions to repair them. His administration will review the current investments and demand more.

Looking to the future, he said his long-term goal is to create a fully dependable and sustainable water system so that Jackson residents can use the town’s water to cook, clean, wash their clothes and drink.

“Our biggest strength as a city is the resilience of our people,” Lumumba said. “As an administration, we’re going to struggle without ceasing until we bring them the resources that they so justly deserve. We’re going to call out those that play a role in this.”

What we know about the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi ...

CNN —

Mississippi’s capital has been without reliable tap water service since Monday, when rainwater flooding helped push an already-hobbled treatment plant to begin failing.

Significant gains have been made to restart the system, officials have said, but when potable water will flow again to Jackson’s roughly 150,000 residents – who for weeks already had been under a boil-water alert – remains an open question.

Until then, families and businesses are forced to buy water or rely on an inefficient system of bottled water pick-up sites for water to drink, cook and brush teeth.

Here’s how the latest chapter in the city’s water disaster has unfolded:

What is the latest news?

Efforts to continue to bring a vital water treatment plant fully online and restore clean drinking water to the city experienced complications Friday, Jim Craig, director of health protection at the Mississippi Department of Health, told reporters.

One of the issues was a chemical imbalance Friday afternoon that prompted officials to shut down the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant for a few hours.

“It’s like fixing the airplane while you’re still flying. You have to be very careful how you fix it so that you stay flying,” he said. “It’s the same thing as we’re trying to produce water. All that water demand needs to continue to occur, and every time we have to do some maintenance then we have to offset some of that.”

Workers at seven state-run distribution centers have handed out almost 2.8 million bottles of water over a period of about 24 hours, Gov. Tate Reeves said.

Earlier, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a news conference the city has had “two consecutive days of gains.” Lumumba said the signs of recovery don’t “mean by any stretch that all residents have pressure or water.”

One of the challenges as the city reestablishes water pressure is the possibility of pipes bursting.

“We know that we have brittle pipes, we have aged pipes, just as our water treatment facilities are aged,” he said.

The mayor also explained the process before the boil water notice can be lifted, saying, “Once pressure is restored to all residents, then the next stage of that process is that the health department gives the OK, gives the go ahead to start the testing process.

“Once that testing process begins, there are about 120 sites that they begin to take samples from, and you have to have two consecutive days of clear samples before the boil water notice can be lifted.”

What led to this week’s outage

The main pumps at Jackson’s O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant around late July were severely damaged, forcing the facility to operate on smaller backup pumps, the governor said this week, without elaborating on the damage, which city officials also have not detailed.

The city announced August 9 the troubled pumps were being pulled offline.

Then last week, the governor was warned Jackson would soon fail to produce running water, Reeves said.

And then came the flooding: Heavy rains last week pushed the Pearl River to overflow, cresting Monday, and to flood some Jackson streets – while also impacting intake water at a reservoir that feeds the drinking water treatment plant.

A chemical imbalance was created on the conventional treatment side of the plant, Craig said Wednesday.

It affected particulate removal, causing a side of the plant to be temporarily shut down and resulting in a loss of water distribution pressure, he said.

Staffing problems have further complicated matters, officials said.

A tanker leaves O.B. Curtis Water Plant on Wednesday. Austin Steele/CNN

What needs to be done to fix it

A temporary rented pump was installed Wednesday at the plant, and “significant” gains were made by Thursday, the city said, with workers making a “series of repairs and equipment adjustments.”

As of Thursday, water pressure had been restored to some residents, with those close to the plant having almost normal pressure, the city said. Those farther away and at higher elevations still had little to no pressure.

On Friday, the pumping pressure at the Curtis treatment plant fell from 85 pounds per square inch to 77.2, Craig said.

A boil-water advisory went into effect in late July – well before Monday’s service disruptions – after cloudy water at the O.B. Curtis plant was blamed on high levels of the mineral manganese, “combined with the use of lime,” the city said. That order has yet to be lifted.

Contractors also were making assessments Thursday, according to the city update, and the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers were at the site.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell in Jackson on Friday. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the city, and it will allow Mississippi to tap into critical resources to respond to the crisis, Reeves said.

How people are coping without running water

Residents have understandably been angry and frustrated, with no water to drink or brush their teeth or, in many cases, even flush toilets.

Some waited hours in long lines this week for a case of bottled water, only to be turned away when the supply ran out.

Jeraldine Watts, 86, was in a line that stretched for 2 miles, she told CNN.

Watts, who was born and raised in Jackson and lives with her daughter and granddaughter, said they have to use bottled or boiled water for everything – even to cook and wash dishes.

“We are constantly paying water bills, and we can’t use the water,” Jackson resident Corean Wheeler said. “We feel like we are living in a third world country in America, and that’s kind of bad.”

Schools switched to virtual learning as of Tuesday, and a medical center was without air conditioning because of a lack of water pressure to feed its chillers, the University of Mississippi Medical Center said Tuesday.

The governor declared an emergency, and the National Guard was deployed to help distribute water. On Thursday, the state opened seven distribution sites, adding to those operated by the city.

Residents who were getting discolored water from their taps were told it should be used for showering or washing hands only and not for drinking or cooking.

“Please make sure in the shower that your mouth is not open,” Craig told residents.

City water system problems go back years

An unreliable water supply is nothing new to Jacksonians. The city’s water system in early 2020 failed an Environmental Protection Agency inspection, which found the drinking water had the potential to be host to harmful bacteria or parasites.

Residents were without water for a month when pipes froze and burst during a 2021 winter storm. And the late July boil-water advisory remains in effect.

The problems are largely systemic – old and leaky pipes, malfunctions at treatment plants and insufficient money to fix the problems, according to a report by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting that the Clarion Ledger published in January.

Staffing at the plant also has been a problem, according to Reeves and the mayor.

“This is something that has been occurring for years, but sometimes it takes these catastrophes to make sure that this disaster comes to light,” Mississippi state Rep. Ronnie Crudup Jr., of Jackson, told CNN this week.

The EPA and the city entered into an agreement last year to address “long-term challenges and make needed improvements to the drinking water system.” And that agency recently announced $74.9 million in federal water and sewer infrastructure funds for Mississippi, though $2 billion is needed for the work, the mayor has said.

Advocates have pointed to systemic and environmental racism as among the causes of Jackson’s ongoing water issues and lack of resources to address them. About 82.5% of Jackson’s population identifies as Black or African American, according to census data.

Cities like Jackson suffer the “benign neglect” of those in power, Catherine Coleman Flowers, founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, told CNN in April. “I am concerned that it’s just another symbol of what I call one of the relatives of the Confederacy where communities that need help are not given the help, especially if they’re marginalized or communities of color.”

Pakistan floods: What you need to know | CNN

CNN —

More than one third of Pakistan is underwater, according to satellite images from the European Space Agency (ESA), as deadly floodwaters threaten to create secondary disasters.

See volunteers use bedframe to rescue people from deadly floods 01:19 - Source: CNN

Food is in short supply after water covered millions of acres of crops and wiped out hundreds of thousands of livestock. Meanwhile, aid agencies have warned of an uptick in infectious diseases, leaving millions vulnerable to illness caused by what the United Nations has called a “monsoon on steroids.”

More than 1,100 people have died from the floods since mid-June, nearly 400 of them children, while millions have been displaced, according to Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

Pakistan, which was already grappling with political and economic turmoil, has been thrown into the front line of the human-induced climate crisis.

Here’s what you need to know.

Why are the floods so bad?

Pakistan’s monsoon season usually brings heavy downpours, but this year’s has been the wettest since records began in 1961, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department

Torrential monsoon rainfall – 10 times heavier than usual – has caused the Indus River to overflow, effectively creating a long lake, tens of kilometers wide, according to images from the ESA on August 30.

In the southern Sindh and Balochistan provinces, rainfall has been 500% above average as of August 30, according to the NDMA, engulfing entire villages and farmland, razing buildings and wiping out crops.

Pakistan is responsible for less than 1% of the world’s planet-warming gases, European Union data shows, yet it is the eighth most vulnerable nation to the climate crisis, according to the Global Climate Risk Index.

And it’s paying a hefty price – the South Asian country faced dramatic climate conditions this year, from record heat waves to destructive floods – as the climate crisis exacerbates extreme weather events.

Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan Province, on September 1, 2022. Zahid Hussain/AP

UN Secretary General António Guterres has warned the world is “sleepwalking” into environmental destruction.

“South Asia is one of the world’s global climate crisis hotspots. People living in these hotspots are 15 times more likely to die from climate impacts,” Guterres said on August 30.

“As we continue to see more and more extreme weather events around the world, it is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner as global emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising, putting all of us – everywhere – in growing danger,” he added.

Pakistan is also home to more glaciers than anywhere outside the polar regions. But as the climate warms, it’s becoming more vulnerable to sudden outbursts of melting glacier water.

What has been the damage so far?

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on August 30 the floods were “the worst in the country’s history” and estimated the calamity had caused more than $10 billion in damages to infrastructure, homes and farms.

More than 33 million people have been affected, or about 15% of the population, according to Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman on August 25. More than 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed, while at least 5,000 kilometers of roads have been damaged, according to the NDMA.

Deadly flash floods wipe out critical bridge in Pakistan 02:31 - Source: CNN

Floods have impacted 2 million acres of crops and killed more than 794,000 heads of livestock across Pakistan, according to a situation report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on August 26.

More than 800 health facilities have been damaged in the country, of which 180 are completely damaged, leaving millions of people lacking access to health care and medical treatment, as reported in many affected districts, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

How is it impacting people in Pakistan?

Pakistan is facing twin food and health crises brought by the unprecedented floods.

According to charity Action Against Hunger, 27 million people in the country did not have access to enough food prior the floods, and now the risk of widespread hunger is even more imminent.

The Alkhidmat Foundation distributes food bags at a makeshift camp in Sindh Province, Pakistan on September 1, 2022. Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images

“Our priority right now is to help save and protect lives as waters continue to rise. The scale of these floods has caused a shocking level of destruction – crops have been swept away and livestock killed across huge swathes of the country, which means hunger will follow,” said Saleh Saeed, chief executive of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a United Kingdom-based aid coalition.

Climate crisis doesn't care about caste or creed, says Pakistani diplomat 12:41 - Source: CNN

Prime Minister Sharif said on August 30 that people were facing food shortages and the price of basic items such as tomatoes and onions had “skyrocketed.”

“I have to feed my people. Their stomachs cannot go empty,” Sharif said.

The WHO has also classified Pakistan’s worst floods on record as an emergency of “the highest level,” warning of a rapid spread of disease due to the lack of access to medical assistance.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on August 31 warned of new outbreaks of diarrheal diseases, skin infections, respiratory tract infections, malaria and dengue in the aftermath of the floods, while a litany of waterborne diseases also posed health risks.

Newborn babies lie in their beds after their homes were hit by floods in Sindh Province of Pakistan, on September 1, 2022. Fareed Khan/AP

What is being done?

A National Flood Response and Coordination Center has been set up as the country reels from the flooding, according to Pakistan’s Prime Minister.

The United Nations has launched a $160 million appeal aiming to reach 5.2 million of the most vulnerable people in the country, while the WHO also released $10 million to treat the injured, deliver supplies to health facilities, and prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

The Pakistan Army rescues people affected by the floods in the hard-hit Sindh Province on September 1, 2022. Adeel Abbasi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Two Chinese military planes carrying tents and other flood aid landed in Karachi on August 30, according to the Consul General of China to Karachi. China has pledged $14.5 million in aid to Pakistan, while the UK government also announced a contribution of 1.5 million pounds ($1.73 million) for relief efforts.

Prime Minister Sharif told CNN on August 30 the country was in talks with Moscow over importing wheat without breaching Western sanctions imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sharif said that while Pakistan had secured 1 million metric tons of wheat amid the global shortage, the country will now need more due to the impact of the floods on the agriculture sector – which accounts for almost 40% of employment, according to World Bank data.

In the Middle East, countries spend heavily to transform seawater ...

BARKA, Oman — On the shore of the Arabian Sea, two massive pipes, each more than six feet in diameter, extend from a fenced compound down into the water.

The pipes work like powerful straws, sucking in seawater and sending it through a series of tanks and filters.

The Barka 4 desalination plant is Oman’s newest and largest. Powered by natural gas, the plant went online last year and at full capacity can churn out 74 million gallons of potable water in a day — enough to fill 112 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Oman relies on desalination because its extreme scarcity of water leaves few other options. In this corner of the Arabian Peninsula, there isn’t a single river that flows year-round, and pumping from wells has led to depleted aquifers and allowed saltwater to seep into groundwater along the coast.

The country has a total of nine large desalination plants, plus 47 small plants, which the government says supply about 86% of the country’s potable water.

The technology is expensive and energy-intensive, and the government heavily subsidizes water rates to keep prices low.

Other countries across the Arabian Peninsula are similarly dependent on government-subsidized desalination plants. In Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, rulers have for years poured oil and gas wealth into plants that transform seawater into a steady supply for their growing populations in cities on the Persian Gulf from Doha to Dubai.

No other region on Earth desalinates so much water. The Middle East, according to experts, accounts for more than 60% of the world’s total desalination capacity.

Other water-stressed countries, such as Morocco and Australia, have also begun to tap the oceans. And in the arid American Southwest, water officials and urban planners are increasingly looking to desalination as a potential partial solution for cities whose water supplies are under pressure due to overuse, years of drought and the effects of climate change.

Oman’s first desalination plant started operating in 1976, and since then the number of facilities has steadily grown along the shore of the Gulf of Oman.

The $314 million Barka 4 plant was built by a consortium of companies led by Suez, which will operate the facility for 20 years under a contract.

Leading a tour of the plant, managers from the Paris-based company touted the reverse-osmosis technology as state-of-the-art.

"Energy consumption is very low in this plant," said Estelle Clermont, the plant’s operations and maintenance manager.

Compared with other older plants, Barka 4 consumes about a quarter less gas-fired energy per volume of water produced. Clermont said this represents the future of desalination, as costs continue to come down with technological improvements.

She and other managers in hard hats walked alongside one of the giant beige intake pipes, which snaked from the shore toward the plant. They climbed up stairs to a platform and looked down from a railing into a deep rectangular pool where the seawater was flowing in.

The plant can pump in as much as 7.1 million gallons of seawater per hour, Clermont said. The salt-free water that emerges from the plant, she said, supplies about one-fifth of the country’s desalinated water.

Looking out over an open tank, where the water welled up and swirled in eddies, fellow manager Sebastian De la Garde explained that the first phase of treatment removes algae and other particles.

Brownish water cascaded down a waterfall-like structure one on side of the treatment platform. Some of what’s filtered out ends up as concentrated sludge, which is sent to a landfill. The process also generates highly salty brine, which pours back into the gulf.

On the other side of the plant, a blue pipe nearly 5 feet wide emerges and arches over the road. It carries potable water toward Muscat, the capital, and other cities on the coast.

The costs of relying on desalination

The country, officially called the Sultanate of Oman, has been ruled since 1970 by Sultan Qaboos bin Said. He and his government have dedicated a substantial portion of the country’s natural gas to generating electricity and running desalination plants, while keeping water rates low through large subsidies.

In its latest annual report, the government’s Public Authority for Water listed the equivalent of $404 million in total subsidies for 2018 — about $1.1 million per day.

Over the years, the government has regularly added more desalination plants to keep up with rising water consumption and the increasing population, which has grown to about 5 million with the arrival of immigrants from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries.

"Desalinated water is increasing because the government has a supply policy, which means that whenever we need more water, we build new desalination plants," said Slim Zekri, a professor who leads the natural resource economics department at Sultan Qaboos University.

He said low water rates have long meant a lack of "demand management" or financial incentives for people to conserve. The government budget has been squeezed, while per-capita water use has climbed.

"Desalination is quite expensive and energy-dependent," Zekri said, "and we need to think about solutions for the future."

He said that should mean raising water prices substantially while continuing to ensure economical rates for low-income people.

Homeowners and businesses have long paid a water rate of 2 baisa per gallon in Omani currency, which works out to about a dollar for 200 gallons. (That subsidized price, while inexpensive, is still higher than what people pay for water in parts of the United States. For example, an average customer with a single-family home in Phoenix pays about 60 cents for 200 gallons.)

After many years of keeping the price frozen, Oman's Public Authority for Water announced this year that it's raising rates for customers who use more than 5,000 gallons a month. Above that level, people will be charged 25% more.

Zekri said this marginal increase still won't cover the cost of water service, and won't provide an effective incentive for people to use less.

He said water prices should be increased more to encourage conservation and help drive investments in water-saving technologies. Taking steps to manage the demand for water, he said, would also help limit declines in aquifers, which have fallen due to heavy groundwater pumping, and would help Oman prepare as climate change brings higher temperatures and shifts in rainfall patterns.

"I'm quite confident that water can be managed properly and we can avoid a water crisis," Zekri said, "if we put in place the appropriate management strategies."

Rashid al-Abri, an assistant director of Oman's water ministry, said government officials are seeking to improve on their approaches to water management and are looking at alternatives in addition to desalination, including reusing more treated wastewater — some of which is now used to irrigate roadside vegetation in cities.

Taking advantage of more recycled water, he said, should help address the country's shortage and reduce strains on aquifers.

Farmers struggle as aquifers decline

While desalinated water flows to faucets in cities on the coast, groundwater remains the primary source for farms and many inland towns.

Some Omani farmers in mountainous areas still depend on ancient systems of water tunnels called aflaj. The channels were hand-dug centuries ago to tap underground water sources on mountain slopes. The water runs through the underground passages and into open aqueducts, nourishing crops such as dates and lemons, as wells as grasses that villagers use to feed goats and cows.

While many of the aflaj are still flowing, some have dwindled and dried up as the wells and pumps of farmers and towns have drawn on the aquifers and lowered the water tables.

Elsewhere, in the Batinah coastal plain, groundwater pumping for agriculture has also taken a major toll. Over decades, the pumping has drawn seawater into the groundwater, making it too salty for crops.

Zekri and other researchers are working on a government-supported project tracking farm water use in an effort to begin to address the problem, which continues to worsen.

"We have seawater intrusion up to 12 kilometers (7 miles) now inland," Zekri said. "And we have been observing a lot of plantations fading, dying because of salinity."

Along roads near the Barka 4 desalination plant, some farmlands sit dry and abandoned. The intruding seawater ruined the groundwater years ago. The farmers left behind dusty fields and dead palm trees.

Some Omani farmers have been buying their own small-scale desalting units to use brackish groundwater that would otherwise be unsuitable for crops.

But when the hyper-salty brine from the process isn’t disposed of properly, it can further pollute aquifers, said Zaher bin Kahlied al-Sulaimani, president of an organization called the Oman Water Society.

"The problem is, the salinity is increasing year by year," al-Sulaimani said. "And the pumping has increased."

His group has held seminars to explore how farmers can better manage the brine.

Muscat also is home to the Middle East Desalination Research Center, an institution that was established in 1996 as part of the peace process in the Middle East. The center focuses on research and training, promoting desalination as a solution that can help address scarcity and alleviate tensions.

How political aims feed a big business

Desalination has become the "techno-fix" of choice for governments across the Arabian Peninsula because it has provided a way to deal with water scarcity and enable rapid growth, while also serving the political aims of the region’s monarchs, said Laurent Lambert, an assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Across the Gulf region, he said, leaders have focused on demonstrating the capacity of their governments through big water infrastructure projects, projecting an image that "large is powerful," while providing water to the public at highly subsidized rates.

In Qatar, which is the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas, domestic water comes entirely from desalination plants, and water is free for citizens.

Other countries, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also subsidize desalinated water, charging people a share of the cost.

As this system has grown entrenched over the years, governments have found themselves in a cycle of desalinating increasingly more water, while the costs in money and energy have continued to climb.

"It’s very hard to take away subsidies, and it’s very hard to change people’s attitudes towards what they deem to be naturally free. 'That’s water. Why should we pay for it?' That’s the mentality we have here across the region," Lambert said.

The countries are burning increasing amounts of natural gas, and sometimes oil, to run the plants, Lambert said. That translates into more emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases and also reduces the amount of fuel sold internationally, cutting into government revenues.

But the governments continue to take big financial losses, he said, because the idea of reforming the system and cutting subsidies is widely seen as politically unpalatable.

"I call it sustained unsustainability, meaning the government pays nevertheless," Lambert said. "They prefer to make small adjustments but keep the thing as it is, rather than make people unhappy."

And while the plants keep humming, the environmental footprint goes beyond the pollution generated by burning fossil fuels.

The brine has to be disposed of somewhere, and it’s typically released back into the sea.

"You have some places where you make a huge concentration of salt, so you may kill the fisheries, you may kill the wildlife," Lambert said. "You may add stress on local corals, which were a niche for a lot of life."

The Suez managers at the Barka 4 plant said they’ve done monitoring work and believe the brine from the plant isn’t harming the surrounding marine environment.

Suez’s partners on the project include Japan-based Itochu Corp., France’s Engie, and the Omani company WJ Towell.

Across the Gulf region, desalination plants are a lucrative business for a list of foreign companies, among them Japan’s Sumitomo Corp., the French company Veolia, and U.S.-based Bechtel Group.

The desal business is booming in arid and water-stressed regions around the world, with plants proliferating to supply cities in Israel, Jordan and Egypt, as well as Spain, Singapore and South Africa.

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On the California coast, the Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant in San Diego County started operating in 2015 and is now the largest plant in the United States, producing about 50 million gallons of drinking water per day. It’s the most expensive water in San Diego’s mix of supplies, and people in the area pay some of the highest water rates in the country.

To the north in Santa Barbara, a long-closed plant started operating in 2017.

The company Poseidon Water has proposed another large plant in Huntington Beach, where the plan has faced controversy over environmental concerns and the projected costs. Other facilities have been proposed along the Pacific Coast in places like Monterey and Dana Point.

Mexico and U.S. eye the Sea of Cortez

Landlocked Arizona has been studying the possibility of working with Mexico to desalinate water from the Sea of Cortez. Efforts to explore the concept got a boost in 2017, when Mexico and the U.S. government pledged as part of a Colorado River accord to jointly study the possibility of building a desalination plant.

The agreement, called Minute 323, listed potential locations for a plant including the Pacific Coast, the sewage-laden New River on the Mexico-California border, and the shore of the Sea of Cortez.

The countries formed a working group with representatives of federal and state agencies.

A team of consultants is now preparing a study assessing the potential for desalinating water from the Sea of Cortez. They're looking at technologies, possible locations along the Sonora coast between Puerto Peñasco and Puerto Libertad, and potential effects on the marine environment.

The study is scheduled to be released next year. A desalination plant theoretically could benefit Arizona though a water exchange, in which some users of Colorado River water in Mexico would instead get desalinated water, freeing up river water for Arizona.

The concept is mentioned prominently as one of multiple options in a new report on "Long-Term Water Augmentation Options for Arizona," which consultants prepared for a group appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey called the Water Augmentation, Innovation and Conservation Council. Along with ocean desalination, the report lists options such as desalinating brackish groundwater within Arizona, or transferring groundwater from outlying rural areas to the state’s fast-growing cities.

Part of the reason there’s no concrete proposal on the table is that there doesn’t yet seem to be enough support for desalination, said Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

"It’s not yet needed. But there’s recognition that it could well be needed in the future," she said.

Estimates of how much water could come from a desalination plant suggest the amount would be, at most, about 100,000 acre-feet a year, Porter said, a relatively small quantity compared with Arizona’s total Colorado River allotment of 2.8 million acre-feet.

"I think ocean desal isn’t the big answer that a lot of people dream of it being," said Porter, who is a member of the governor’s water council. "It’s going to be the most expensive water ever developed for Arizona, and it just isn’t going to yield the supplies that people envision."

In addition to the expense of treating water, she said, there are environmental concerns, and the cross-border agreements to exchange water would also be complex.

Porter traveled to Israel last year with a group from the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and they toured the large desalination plant in Ashkelon.

"It’s amazing what they’re doing with ocean desal. And I hope Arizona never has the kind of water stress that Israel faces," Porter said. "It doesn’t make sense to be investing in these in really, really expensive forms of water supply when you have much, much more affordable water available."

Porter said Arizona still has potential to stretch its existing supplies through conservation and more reuse of reclaimed water. And there are also opportunities for more voluntary water deals, she said, like those negotiated for the Colorado River Drought Contingency Plan. As part of the plan, the Gila River Indian Community and the Colorado River Indian Tribes will contribute some of their water in exchange for payments to help Arizona deal with water cutbacks.

The first cutbacks under the Colorado River deal will come next year, with Arizona, Nevada and Mexico leaving some of their allotted water in Lake Mead to reduce the risk of the depleted reservoir falling further.

In the long term, desalinating seawater could help as part of a strategy for adapting to climate change, Porter said, but it isn’t likely to take hold until Arizona has first "plucked off all the lower-hanging fruit, which probably includes desalinating brackish groundwater in some places."

Looking to the future, though, Porter said a seawater desalination partnership seems likely to happen in Mexico eventually.

"If I had to bet, I would bet that it is going to be tried within 30 years," she said. "It is the most reliable supply of municipal water in many ways, so that would be a benefit, and we expect growth."

Ultimately, decisions on whether desalination makes sense — for the desert Southwest and other parts of the world — will depend on considering any other alternatives, and weighing whether the high costs of turning to the sea pencil out.

Reach reporter Ian James at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and at OurGrandAZ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

California is in a water crisis, yet usage is way up. Officials are ...

CNN —

California is facing a crisis. Not only are its reservoirs already at critically low levels due to unrelenting drought, residents and businesses across the state are also using more water now than they have in seven years, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to encourage just the opposite.

Newsom has pleaded with residents and businesses to reduce their water consumption by 15%. But in March, urban water usage was up by 19% compared to March 2020, the year the current drought began. It was the highest March water consumption since 2015, the State Water Resources Control Board reported earlier this week.

Part of the problem is that the urgency of the crisis isn’t breaking through to Californians. The messaging around water conservation varies across different authorities and jurisdictions, so people don’t have a clear idea of what applies to whom. And they certainly don’t have a tangible grasp on how much a 15% reduction is with respect to their own usage.

Kelsey Hinton, the communications director of Community Water Center, a group advocating for affordable access to clean water, said that urban communities — which typically get water from the state’s reservoirs — don’t seem to understand the severity of the drought in the way that rural communities do, where water could literally stop flowing out of the tap the moment their groundwater reserves are depleted.

“In our work every day, people feel how serious this is, and know that we need to be working toward real solutions to address ongoing drought,” Hinton told CNN. “But then living in Sacramento, you don’t see the same urgency here because we’re not reliant on groundwater and scarce resources in the same way that these communities are.”

But advocates say government officials are also focusing on the wrong approach. They say voluntary residential water cuts are not the solution, and that restrictions should be mandated for businesses and industries that use the vast majority of the state’s water.

“Corporate water abuse has to be addressed or no other measures will matter,” said Jessica Gable, a spokesperson for Food & Water Watch.

“The perception in California right now is it’s no secret any longer that drought is linked with climate change,” Gable told CNN. “But there has been no effort to curtail the industries that are using the most water, which are coincidentally the industries that are also sending out the most emissions that are fueling the climate crisis.”

Onus misplaced

Most of March’s spike in water usage came from water jurisdictions in Southern California. Usage in the South Coast hydrologic region, which includes Los Angeles and San Diego County, was up 27% over March 2020, for example, according to data provided by the state’s water board. Only the North Coast region saved water in March, cutting about 4.3% of its use.

Edward Ortiz, spokesperson for the State Water Resources Control Board, said March was a huge setback for the governor’s water goals.

“This is a concerning development in our response to the drought as a state,” Ortiz told CNN. “Making water conservation a way of life is one way Californians can respond to these conditions. Saving water should be a practice whatever the weather.”

He said Californians “need to redouble efforts to conserve water inside and outside of our homes and businesses.”

Last month, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California announced its most severe water restrictions for residents and businesses in the counties around Los Angeles, with a goal of slashing water use by at least 35%. Beginning June 1, outdoor water usage will be limited to one day a week.

Sprinklers water fields in Kern County. Mario Tama/Getty Images

But community advocates say residents wonder whether big water users are also faced with the same pressure and painful decisions to conserve – namely, agriculture that requires a large amount of water (things like almonds, alfalfa, avocado and tomatoes) or fracking, where tens of millions of gallons of water can be used to frack a single fossil fuel well.

Gable said that while every little bit matters, the repeated pleas for individuals to save water can “seem out of touch at best and possibly negligent,” given that the industries that could drastically cut back on the excessive amount of water allocated to them are rarely held accountable.

Amanda Starbuck, research director with Food & Water Watch, said cutting back on residential water use is like telling people recycling could save the planet. While it’s a meaningful action, she said it’s not going to make a dent in the crisis at large.

“It’s also kind of a little bit demeaning to blame residential use for these crises,” Starbuck told CNN. “It’s just a small sliver of the overall consumption. It’s a much bigger problem, and we really need to start bringing in these big industries that are guzzling water during this time of drought.”

A spokesperson for Newsom’s office told CNN that local water agencies have set new targets since March that should lead to lower usage — including the outdoor watering restriction — and more decisions are coming in front of the state board this month.

“We are hopeful these actions will significantly contribute to the state’s overall water reduction goals as outdoor watering is one of the biggest single users of water,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The spokesperson also pointed to additional funding for water resiliency the governor announced in his budget proposal on Friday. That funding is part of $47 billion slated to tackle the impacts of the climate crisis in the state.

“With the infusion of additional funding, we will be able to more effectively reach Californians about the need to conserve along with the biggest water saving actions they can take, and support local water districts in responding to the drought emergency,” the spokesperson said.

Other sources are running dry

While much of the water conversation is focused on urban usage, Hinton said rural communities live with day-to-day anxiety that the water will stop flowing.

“The bigger story, at least for us, is when we are in the middle of drought like this, it’s not just shorter showers and stopping outdoor water use for our families,” Hinton told CNN. “Our families are worried that their water is just going to stop running all together.”

These are communities that don’t rely on reservoirs — where much of the focus has been for reaching critically low levels — but instead use private groundwater wells.

The big concern is that during extremely dry conditions, the state’s groundwater levels sink while more is pulled up for agriculture and other uses.

“The urgency is there with the families we work with, because they know what’s happened before,” she said. “We have folks who have had wells dry up since the last drought and have still not been able to afford to deepen them or get connected to a long-term solution.”

Blistering heat waves, worsening drought and destructive wildfires have plagued the West in recent years. As these vivid images of climate crisis play out, Hinton believes the state needs to prioritize the water needs of individuals over industry.

“Climate change has made drought a reality for us forever, and now, this is something that we have to deal with as a state,” Hinton said. “And the more that we can accept that and be proactive, the less we’re going to be constantly reacting to these situations of entire communities going dry or of urban areas having to cut water to this amount because we’ve already overused what was available to us.”

Water, sanitation and hygiene can save millions around the world: Frist

Bill Frist

Opinion contributor

This summer has seen the unprecedented and simultaneous outbreak of six of eight diseases posing the greatest threats to public health, according to the World Health Organization. You’d think that after the alarmingly fast spread of Ebola in West Africa just a few years ago, we’d have learned our lesson. Instead, the health intervention that has saved more lives than any other in recorded history remains alarmingly absent in global health care. That poses an immediate and long-term danger to us all.

We call it WASH — water, sanitation and hygiene. It's the most critical resource in my preparation for every surgical procedure I performed over my lifetime, and it is dismally deficient or nonexistent in hundreds of thousands of health care facilities around the world. Not only are we wasting billions of dollars in health care costs and lost productivity, we’re undercutting our most effective front-line defense in disease prevention and containment.

This lack of WASH is a key reason why, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak that put the world on edge, the incidence of Ebola was 103-fold higher in health care workers in Sierra Leone than in the general population, and 42-fold higher in Guinea. Containing the West African Ebola outbreak took years, cost billions, and claimed more than 11,000 lives in three countries. The disease’s rapid spread was partly because family members and health care personnel could not adequately wash their hands after touching the sick and deceased.

Caring for the sick without sinks or toilets

From emergency departments and labor-and-delivery to pediatrics, imagine the health hazards of medical care without sinks, soap and toilets. I’ve seen it firsthand. I vividly recall operating in war-torn Sudan with no electricity or running water, and no gloves or gowns. We boiled water in a tin coffee pot, then let it cool enough to wash our hands with the bar of soap we had brought with us. It was a far cry from the sleek, sterile facilities we as American doctors typically operate in, but we did our best with the resources we had to protect our patients and ourselves. At the time, our volunteer clinic was the only health facility serving half a million residents in southwest Sudan.

But WASH isn’t only missing during times of war. A landmark report of more than 129,000 health care facilities in 78 low- to middle- income countries uncovered conditions that should be unimaginable in the 21st century: 50 percent of health care facilities lack piped water, 33 percent lack basic toilets, and 39 percent lack soap.

That’s a daily war on children. Newborns are at particular risk in the health care setting. One million die on their first day of life. Even more tragic, many early child deaths are preventable with soap and water.

We’re all vulnerable when infection prevention, pandemic containment and antibiotic resistance become deadly uphill battles. Health crises can become catastrophic when illnesses and diseases, easily prevented with soap, clean water and basic sanitation, instead spread and require treatment with overused and misused antibiotics.

For example, Pakistan is now facing the first known drug-resistant typhoid epidemic, and it all started with contaminated water. New outbreaks of a mutated poliovirus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo spurred a national emergency. Because the poliovirus can live in human feces for weeks, the pathogen can enter the environment where sanitation is lacking.

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Getting WASH into health care facilities is doable. Congress has rallied around the water issue before. When I served as Senate majority leader, I drafted legislation to formalize U.S. policy addressing the overall lack of safe water and sanitation in developing nations. On March 2, 2005, I was joined by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid in introducing the Safe Water: Currency for Peace Act, which ultimately became law that December as the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act (named for our colleague who was a longtime champion for WASH).

With this strong bipartisan backing, the new law required the U.S. government to develop and carry out a strategy to increase affordable and equitable access to WASH in developing countries. For the first time ever, we officially made access to safe drinking water, basic sanitation and hygiene a stated objective of U.S. foreign assistance.

Thirteen years later, we need that level of bipartisanship and committed leadership. We have here a solvable problem and strategic opportunity that will have a fundamental impact on global health, make us safer, and produce economic benefits of $5 to $46 for every $1 invested, thanks to saved health care costs and increased economic productivity. The time is now.

Congress needs to support the Senate’s recommended $35 million increase in 2019 funding for the Water for the Poor Act (the law we passed, which was strengthened in 2014 as the Water for the World Act). It should include the commitment that $195 million be directed to vital projects in sub-Saharan Africa, and its focus should include WASH in health care facilities.

Foreign aid that's life-saving and cost-efficient

The U.S. Agency for International Development needs to continue to elevate the central importance of WASH in its overall work and adopt an agencywide policy that WASH be made available in every health care facility in which the agency is active.

America alone cannot solve this problem — and we won’t solve it sitting inside our silos. We must lead a collaborative global effort to secure shared financing from governments, nongovernmental organizations, researchers and private donors, and it needs to cut across the health, development, water and finance sectors.

Federal budgets are tight, which is precisely why, at this time of budget concerns and global health threats, Congress should fully fund WASH, and our government should specifically prioritize it in foreign assistance. It’s highly effective, cost-efficient and quite literally a life saver.

Bill Frist is a heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate majority leader, and founder and chairman of global health organization Hope Through Healing Hands. Follow him on Twitter: @bfrist