These five cities could be one natural disaster away from a catastrophic water crisis
CNN — When
torrential rainfall in August 2022 pushed the Pearl River in Mississippi to
surge well beyond its banks, floodwaters spilled into the suburbs of Jackson
and led an already-hobbled water
treatment plant to fail. It
was the final stroke in what experts described as a yearslong issue in the
making, which eventually left tens of thousands of residents in the city
without clean drinking water for weeks. What happened in Jackson,
experts say, is a bellwether for what’s to come if America continues to kick
the can down the road in addressing its aging and crumbling water infrastructure.
The climate crisis threatens to make those issues even more pressing. When
sea levels rise, summers become hotter or heavy rains lead to more flooding,
the country’s water infrastructure – largely built last century and only
designed to last roughly 75 years –
will be more strained than ever, threatening a system vital to human life. At the rate our climate is changing, America’s
water infrastructure is not equipped to handle the challenges to come, said
Erik Olson, the senior strategic director for health and food with the
National Resources Defense Council. “America’s
water system relies on last century’s infrastructure that often can’t protect
our health from hazardous contaminants,” Olson told CNN. “And our outdated
system is completely unprepared for this century’s challenges of intense
heat, drought and flooding.” The
American Society of Civil Engineers gave America’s drinking water
infrastructure a C-minus in its
2021 report card. And climate change-fueled extreme weather disasters
promises a gauntlet of even tougher tests. The 2021 infrastructure legislation signed
by President Joe Biden includes about $30 billion for drinking water, and
the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act another
$550 million for water infrastructure. But experts say those figures are not
enough to make up for decades of disinvestment and mismanagement across the
country. In
Jackson alone, it could cost $1 billion to $2 billion to repair the water
system, and the water industry estimates that the total nationwide costs will
top $1 trillion. “Federal investments account for just a few percent of the
total needs,” Olson said. To
better understand the issue, CNN examined five cities or regions across the
country that show signs of vulnerability under a rapidly warming planet –
from coastal flooding in New York to saltwater intrusion in California’s
groundwater. Read
more at this location for the additional story highlights on the following five
major cities: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/02/us/water-infrastructure-failure-us-cities-climate/index.html Buffalo, New York Prichard, Alabama St. Louis, Missouri Central Coast, California San Juan, Puerto Rico |
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