Life without clean water. Sounds crazy, no? Like a fiddler on a roof. But, just like there can be a fiddler on a roof, millions of people lack access to potable water – the very lifeblood of, well, life, necessary for people, animals, plants, and the ecosystem, and something that maintains life on the planet Earth. It plays a key role in many of our body’s functions, including bringing nutrients to cells, getting rid of wastes, protecting joints and organs, and maintaining body temperature.
According to UN Water, almost 3.6 million people die each year from diseases stemming from unclean water, a rate of one person every ten seconds. Most of them are children under the age of five. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that, each year, an estimated 1 .7 to 2.2 million people die from waterborne diseases.
According to the World Health Organization, unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and a lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrheal diseases which include diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio, and these alone kill roughly 328,000 children each year, or 900 per day.
Most people who live in urban areas assume that a lack of clean, safe water is something that occurs on the other side of the world but there is a major city where the clean water crises is boiling over just hundreds of miles from several major U.S. cities, namely in Mexico City, which is just 692 miles (1,113 km) from San Antonio, Texas; 754 miles (1,213 km) from Austin, Texas; 1,175 miles (1,891 km) from Albuquerque, New Mexico; 1,254 miles (2,018 km) from Phoenix, Arizona; and 1,444 miles (2,324 km) from San Diego, California.
Indeed, Mexico City, one of the world’s biggest municipalities, may only be months away from running out of potable water. Already having been at risk for this for decades due to geography, a leaky infrastructure, inadequate drinking water quality and wastewater treatment, as well as inefficient utilities, poor urban planning, and climate change has compounded the metropolis’ problem and hastened the pace at which the city will possibly run out of safe drinking water.
The three dams that supply water to the Valley of Mexico are at only 30% of capacity, Mexican outlet Excelsior reported in early February. Meanwhile, the National Water Commission estimates that Mexico City and some of the surrounding areas could run out of water by August 26 of this year if the city’s reservoirs aren’t replenished or water consumptions isn’t cut significantly.
This is of little consolation to the 57% of the population that currently lacks access to safe drinking water: That’s only five million in the city proper and 12.5 million in the Mexico City metropolitan area. When this happens, and it’s less an “if” than a “when,” people won’t be able to get enough to drink, wash, or irrigate crops, economic decline is likely, and all hell will break loose and make SARS-CoV-2 – from which 334,958 people there died – look like a minor chest cold.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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