The Growing Crisis Behind Your Faucet
Picture this: you turn on your kitchen faucet expecting crystal-clear water, but instead, what flows out carries invisible dangers that have been accumulating for decades. This isn’t a distant dystopian fantasy – it’s happening right now in American cities across the nation. What started as whispers about water quality has evolved into a nationwide crisis that’s forcing millions to abandon their tap water in favor of bottled alternatives.
The numbers are staggering. At least 45% of the nation’s tap water is estimated to have one or more types of the chemicals known as per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. This isn’t just a minor inconvenience – it’s a health emergency that’s hiding in plain sight.
Jackson, Mississippi: When an Entire City Ran Dry
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.
For example, historic flooding last summer damaged operations at a water treatment plant in Jackson, Mississippi, leaving more than 150,000 people without safe drinking water for weeks. The event drew national attention to Jackson, a Black-majority city, and shed light on the water issues that residents there have been shouldering for decades (and continue to do so)…