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water
Rain Barrels at the End of the World
I can’t keep Donald Trump from building up ICE as a paramilitary goon squad or stop the polar ice caps from melting, but I can do my best not to use too much water.
Sep 24, 2025
The truck wheel’s inner tube was right in front of me, no longer half-submerged in the pond’s late summer muck. After so many hot weeks without rain, the water had dried up and the garbage was completely exposed.
My feet barely sank into the mud as I pulled the inner tube free. It was heavier than I expected, full of leftover pond water. I tipped it to drain the water, so I could carry it away. But that water just kept dribbling out.
It was dark and smelled of rotten leaves. As I shook the tube, I tried to keep the muck from getting on my shoes. There must have been 3 or 4 gallons of it. Contorted in an uncomfortable crouch and harassed by bugs as the water glugged slowly out of the little hole, I felt impatient. I was ready to share my grubby prize with my friends, but the hole was so small and I was still far from the road. So, I waited, watching the water continue to trickle out.
But I couldn’t just wait. Instead, my mind drifted to catastrophe, and I began imagining a near future where I could no longer take water for granted. Such a thought was in my head not just because I’m prone to binge on dystopian novels but because I read the newspaper and watch the TV news at night. So, there I was, crouching at the no-longer-pond’s edge, cradling that huge inner tube, and wondering how long it would be in our overheating future before the dark, fetid water I was pouring onto the ground would seem like a precious resource for my family and me. Extended drought? The collapse of our water infrastructure? War? None of those nightmare scenarios is remote enough anymore that I can simply dismiss them as figments of my overactive imagination.
There is no longer any human right to water in Gaza or parts of the West Bank either.
Meanwhile, I continued to think about that gross water. How would I clean it if I needed to? I recalled my survival-skills training between 8th and 9th grade and decided I would first have to filter it, then boil it, and finally treat it with iodine. And no, it wouldn’t be delicious or refreshing, but it probably wouldn’t kill us either. Then I thought about how it might have been inside that inner tube for years and realized that life would have to be brutish indeed before I considered such a last resort water source.
Is our water infrastructure here in New London, Connecticut, old? It sure is. Sometimes there are even black flecks in the water that pours out of our faucets. But no worries now. After all, I had a big bottle of fleckless water in my backpack, and I certainly wouldn’t need to drink that ancient inner-tube pond water. Not today, anyway.
Better yet, rain was forecast for later in the weekend! And so, the moment passed—but not completely because I suddenly remembered some water I drank 30 years ago that had been boiled over a wood fire in a small town in Guatemala when I was part of a peace delegation there. All these years later, my tongue could still feel the eerie dryness, the woodiness of that water, and suddenly I wondered whether that feeling would be in my future, too.
Water Wars—For Real
The kids in New London had gathered in this park just a few weeks earlier for “Water Wars,” a beloved community institution where, on a hot summer morning, kids and grown-ups arm themselves with water guns and soak one another. That day, there was also a dunk tank, a deejay, and dozens of people running around with big, brightly colored Super Soakers.
In truth, I’ve never liked the event, perhaps because I’m a grumpy old person who just doesn’t care for guns of any sort, even play ones. And now, contemplating the future loss of water and the violence that could come with it, those Water Wars suddenly seemed like fin de siècle madness to me. As I—excuse the image—immerse myself ever more deeply in the current and impending water crises, I find myself increasingly troubled by the very real water wars to come.
The Pacific Institute, which has tracked water-related conflicts for three decades, never counted more of them than the 347 in 2023 (the last year for which it had complete data). Its report distinguished between water as a trigger for war, a weapon of war, and a casualty of war. In Burkina Faso, Mexico, Ukraine, and elsewhere globally, civilians now all too often find themselves going without water, as its sources and treatment facilities are destroyed, while groups fight over who controls what water remains.
Dr. Peter Gleick, cofounder of the Pacific Institute, wrote The Third Age of Water in which he argues that everyone deserves the “human right to water.” And at this moment, nowhere on Earth is water more a cause for and casualty of war than in Palestine. As he notes, that is “partly a reflection on the scarcity of water in the region. It’s partly a reflection on disputes over control of land in the West Bank. And it’s partly a reflection of the massive destruction of Gaza after the Hamas attack in October, where infrastructure of all kinds has been targeted—civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, water systems, energy systems. It’s a reflection of the broad violence in the region.” In short, there is no longer any human right to water in Gaza or parts of the West Bank either.
And believe it or not, even as such realities came to my mind, the water was still dribbling out of that inner tube, while my arms hurt ever more from holding it up. Still, when I placed my minuscule discomfort alongside that of all those people in Gaza, waiting in vain for both water and food in a manmade famine of genocidal proportions, I felt ashamed.
All Wars Are Resource Wars
Even before the complete leveling of all infrastructure there in an almost two-year massive bombardment, the lives of Palestinians were violently controlled and curtailed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). An IDF Military Order had long forbidden Palestinians from building any new water installations without a permit from the Israeli army. Since that order was issued in 1967, almost no one has gotten such a permit. So, Palestinians weren’t able to drill new water wells, install pumps, or even deepen existing wells. And now, many of them don’t have access to fresh water springs at all and are cut off from the Jordan River.
In a Big Brother twist that boggles the mind, they aren’t even allowed to collect rainwater in cisterns. As writer Ta-Nehisi Coates observed in his book The Message, “Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself.” And if anyone is still on the fence about that one-sided war of dominion, such a piece of information should knock you to the side of the suffering, starving, thirsty, dying Palestinians.
Of course, on some level, all wars are resource wars. Military scholar Michael Klare made exactly that point as early as 2001. For nearly two years, Israel has used Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023 attack on civilian and military targets as its excuse to destroy as much of Gaza as possible—mission (almost) complete. US President Donald Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” fever dream of Gaza as a casino-state built to Atlantic City levels of gaudiness might never be realized, but Israel’s long game certainly includes complete control over Palestinian natural resources, including oil and gas. Americans are propagandized to think of the “poor Palestinians” (if we think of them at all), even though Palestine is rich in natural resources.
Trump Doesn’t Drink Water
The rumor is that Donald Trump drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day (the best argument against “Just for the Taste of It” I’ve ever heard). His aversion to drinking water is well known; and his antipathy toward the basic building blocks of life seems to come right out of a Mad Max movie, but it’s consistent with his administration’s assault on the water system infrastructure in the United States.
The 2024 Report Card of the American Society of Civil Engineers gives our water infrastructure a C-. Worse yet, they project a $309 billion chasm in funding between the drinking-water-infrastructure needs of this country and what the federal government is allocating in investments. And that chasm is expected to grow into a gulf of $620 billion by 2043. In short, we’re losing the equivalent of 50 million Olympic-sized swimming pools of water through leaks and cracks every year, more than enough to meet the needs of the 2.2 million Americans who don’t have running water or basic indoor plumbing, according to Dig Deep, a water access organization. That’s one hell of a lot of people in the richest nation on Earth, even if not that many in a population of 340 million.
While you might imagine that it’s just back-to-the-landers and old white hippies who like to chop wood and haul water, more than 44 million of us are served by inadequate water systems that recently had Safe Drinking Water Act violations—one of every seven Americans. My black-flecked water might be among that number.
President Trump, of course, is hardly bending over backwards to address such a gulf in water access. For him, undoubtedly, the problem doesn’t even register, not like railing against apocalyptic city hellscapes, deputizing brutes to muscle immigrants out of the country, or selectively mourning some victims of gun violence and not others.
Rain Barrel Resistance
I collect rainwater in three big olive barrels with spigots drilled into the bottom and mesh stretched over the top to try to keep mosquitoes from setting up residence there. Earlier this year, I even bought a dozen goldfish after the Internet assured me they would eat mosquito larvae. I freed them into those barrels and encouraged my kids to name them. Within a week, unfortunately, they turned up dead at the top of the barrels.
I use the water to keep my weedy garden alive and give it to my chickens (assumedly with tasty mosquito larvae for extra protein). I got the rain barrels after reading that unchlorinated, untreated rainwater is better for plants. In light of everything, can I now see those barrels as an act of resistance on this distinctly overheating planet of ours? How long before someone tries to regulate rainwater collection? How long before the tech bros figure out a way to put a price tag on what falls from the sky? (That’s anything but far-fetched if you consider how everything else is being privatized.)
How long can I depend on the relatively clean water from my tap? It flows in a big underground pipe from a reservoir less than 10 miles from my home and is filtered by my local water company. That system has provided New London, a town established in the 1600s, with water for a good long time, but will it keep doing so for the foreseeable, ever hotter future? In fact, is there a foreseeable future?
Which will get us first? Forest fires or fascism? Misogyny or microplastics? Global warming or the paramilitary-ICE take over?
Sometimes, I pay my water bill in person. I asked once if there was anything I could do to be more efficient and steward my water resources better. The woman behind the counter looked at my bill and then said, “For a single person, you’re doing pretty good.”
“Oh,” I replied, “I’m actually a family of five.” (I wondered then if I looked like a single lady or if she was just basing her statement on my water consumption.)
“What!?” she exclaimed and added, “You are not a very good water customer then. You should get a pool or wash your car more or something!”
I realized that she was joking and we laughed together. Then, she commended me on my family’s good water savings.
And it’s true that here in the Northeast, I might still be able to lull myself into complacency. It’s raining, in fact, as I write this. But I can’t act so naively when we’re clearly heading off a weather cliff. A recent headline in my local newspaper still haunts me. “Scientists tap ‘secret’ fresh water under the ocean, raising hopes for a thirsty world.” What could go wrong? After all, there’s evidently a vast freshwater aquifer beneath the ocean floor off the eastern coast of the United States and, amid a massive and growing water crisis, the world needs water. However, Woods Hole geophysicist Rob Evans offers caution: “If we were to go out and start pumping these waters, there would almost certainly be unforeseen consequences.”
Will that aquifer and others like it become the United States’ strategic reserves, alongside oil reserves and the nuclear weapons we keep in “reserve” to protect our wealth? Might countries like ours someday go to war to defend any edge they might have in dwindling water reserves? Trump’s saber-rattling at our neighbor to the north was at least partially water related, wasn’t it? In his usual fantasy-filled fashion, he imagined a “large faucet” directing Canadian water to California’s needy orchards and fields.
Preparing for—Responding to—All the Bads
Which will get us first? Forest fires or fascism? Misogyny or microplastics? Global warming or the paramilitary-ICE take over? Obviously, we’re in an age of polycrisis, of multi-headed, interconnected catastrophes that we need to confront all at once.
Talk about drinking from a fire hose! But at least we have to keep trying.
I suffer from brief spells of wanting to just sink into the leftover muck in the park where I found that old inner tube and let all the change—the good and bad, but mostly the bad—just wash over me.
Instead, I shouldered that still heavy (but by now empty) inner tube, put one small foot in front of another, and hauled it out of the pond bed. As I dragged it along the path, I toggled between despair, hopelessness, and a steadfast grind of resolute, teeth-gritting effort to do good.
I can’t change the gutting of federal institutions or the assault on science. But I can pick up trash in a public park. I can’t end the Israel Defense Forces assault on Gaza, but I do boycott (no SodaStream for me). I have divested (my paltry nest egg) and I still support sanctions.
I can’t keep Donald Trump from building up Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a paramilitary goon squad or stop the polar ice caps from melting, but I can smile at my neighbors, network with friends into rapid response whenever ICE shows up, and do my best not to use too much water.
It’s all so small, given everything we face, that it’s almost not worth mentioning. Still, that drying pond bed is at least a little cleaner, my community a little friendlier, and I am at least witnessing (and trying to alleviate) the suffering in Palestine. Shouldn’t that matter at least a little?
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Trump EPA Seeks to Reverse Rules Protecting Drinking Water From Carcinogenic 'Forever Chemicals'
One environmental attorney said that the EPA proposal "prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies' bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Sep 12, 2025
Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration's announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called "forever chemicals" in the nation's drinking water.
In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.
The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”
However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act's robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.
"In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do," Earthjustice said in a statement.
"Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O'Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country."
Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that "the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act."
"It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals," Thompson added. "No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court."
PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.
Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”
Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA's Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:
The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.
Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.
Responding to Thursday's developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that "the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families."
"Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap," he added. "New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS."
While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to "make America healthy again" by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.
“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”
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Why Is Big Tech Using the Energy of the Past to Power the Future?
As these companies invest billions in technology for AI, they must re-up investments in renewables to power our future and protect our communities.
Sep 06, 2025
AI is everywhere. But its powerful computing comes with a big cost to our planet, our neighborhoods, and our wallets.
AI servers are so power hungry that utilities are keeping coal-fired power plants that were slated for closure running to meet the needs of massive servers. And in the South alone, there are plans for 20 gigawatts of new natural-gas power plants over the next 15 years—enough to power millions of homes—just to feed AI’s energy needs.
Multibillion dollar companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta that previously committed to 100% renewable energy are going back to the Jurassic Age, using fossil fuels like coal and natural gas to meet their insatiable energy needs. Even nuclear power plants are being reactivated to meet the needs of power-hungry servers.
At a time when we need all corporations to reduce their climate footprint, carbon emissions from major tech companies in 2023 have skyrocketed to 150% of average 2020 values.
AI data centers also produce massive noise pollution and use huge amounts of water. Residents near data centers report that the sound keeps them awake at night and their taps are running dry.
Many of us live in communities that either have or will have a data center, and we’re already feeling the effects. Many of these plants further burden communities already struggling with a lack of economic investment, access to basic resources, and exposure to high levels of pollution.
To add insult to injury, amid stagnant wages and increasing costs for food, housing, utilities, and consumer goods, AI’s demand for power is also raising electric rates for customers nationwide. To meet the soaring demand for energy that AI data servers demand, utilities need to build new infrastructure, the cost of which is being passed onto all customers.
These companies have the know-how and the wealth to power AI with wind, solar, and batteries—which makes it all the more puzzling that they’re relying on fossil fuels to power the future.
A recent Carnegie Mellon study found that AI data centers could increase electric rates by 25% in Northern Virginia by 2030. And NPR recently reported that AI data centers were a key driver in electric rates increasing twice as fast as the cost of living nationwide—at a time when 1 in 6 households are struggling to pay their energy bills.
All of these impacts are only projected to grow. AI already consumes enough electricity to power 7 million American homes. By 2028, that could jump to the amount of power needed for 22% of all US households.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
AI could be powered by renewable energy that is nonpolluting and works to reduce energy costs for us all. The leading AI companies, who have made significant climate pledges, must lead the way.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta have all made promises to the communities they serve to tackle climate and pollution. They all have climate pledges. And they have made significant investments in renewable energy in the past.
Those investments make sense, since renewables are the most affordable form of electricity. These companies have the know-how and the wealth to power AI with wind, solar, and batteries—which makes it all the more puzzling that they’re relying on fossil fuels to power the future.
If these corporate giants are to be good neighbors, they first need to be open and honest about the scope and scale of the problem and the solutions needed.
As these companies invest billions in technology for AI, they must re-up investments in renewables to power our future and protect our communities. They must ensure that communities have a real voice in how and where AI data centers are built—and that our communities aren’t sacrificed in the name of profits.
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