We can take some consolation in Atlanta that while they are serious, our problems with water aren’t yet world-class. That’s one distinction we don’t want to shoot for.
We haven’t come dangerously close to running out of water as Cape Town did a few years ago. The poor aren’t jostling in 100-plus heat to get to the tankers, which are their only source of water, as they are in New Delhi.
We’re not like Beijing, where 40 percent of the city’s surface water is so polluted it’s not even recommended for agricultural or industrial use. Or Miami, where rising sea levels are making it harder to keep saltwater out of the Biscayne Aquifer, the city’s main source of drinking water.
All we had to contend with was a few days of municipal chaos, wipe-out business losses and traffic snarls. Oh, and however many billions it will take to ensure flowmaggedon doesn’t become a regular occurrence.
Whatever the size and scope, the problems cities around the world are having with water follow a similar course, like water itself running downstream. The court battle recently waged in India between the states of Delhi and Himachal Pradesh over water reserves resembles the old “water wars” between Georgia, Alabama and Florida, except that the level of desperation is much higher.
Atlanta’s most recent water crisis was relatively straightforward and entirely predictable. An aging water main gave out, causing a chain reaction of ruptures which tied up the city for days. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has called on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for an assessment, and former Mayor Shirley Franklin will be heading a blue-ribbon panel to look at the problem.
Those steps are appropriate. But the pipes that burst across much of the city this month were the same pipes Franklin was worried about 20 years ago. Our problems are ruinously expensive, but at least they are straightforward.
Consider Jakarta, on the other hand. As Indonesia’s coastal capital faces rising sea levels, the ground is sinking because an inadequate water system has caused the drilling of illegal wells, which have drained the aquifers underneath the city.
We tend to think about climate change in terms of how hot the world may become. It’s becoming increasingly clear that some of the greatest impacts center around water. And since the world’s great cities are where humans make their greatest demands for water, they have been where climate change has had its most immediate impact, from the droughts which have threatened the water systems in Sao Paulo and Bogota to the storms and rising sea levels threatening New Orleans and Miami.
In most of those cities where the reservoirs are drying up or the ocean has arrived on Main Street, the pipes are as old as these in Atlanta. Hopefully they’ve been better maintained, but there’s no guarantee of that.
The ground-level job of dealing with the broken pipes fell to Al Wiggins Jr., whose resume is a walk through a number of top administrative jobs in Metro area governments. But he’d only been on this job for a month when the water started spewing up in the street.
Wiggins’ appointment to this position — he had been commissioner of the Department of Public Works — was part of a reorganization which marked a two-year reset for Dickens’ administration. The water fiasco has added a new urgency to the mayor’s efforts, after the draining struggle over Cop City, to set the city in a more confident direction.
Perceptive column to place Atlanta’s water problems in global context. New Orleans also contending with saltwater intrusion into Mississippi. Mexico City also running out of water. As Tom points out, water scarcity will be major crisis of future.