By Madison Gilchrist
Leovardo Perez, right, fills a water jug using a hose from a public park water spigot Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, in Houston. Texas officials have ordered 7 million people to boil tap water before drinking it following days of record low temperatures that damaged infrastructure and froze pipes
It feels like ages since that major February snowstorm covered the United States with a white blanket of fresh powdery snow. The snowstorm brought many joys into our lives, such as snow days and playing in the snow, amidst the darkness and dreariness of the pandemic. Fortunately for us, our residential state of Pennsylvania and other states in the northern part of the country were able to enjoy these niceties. However, those in the southern parts of the nation were forced to endure the harsh cold that a winter storm can bring.
Texas was one of the states that was hit hardest by the storm; in its wake, it left millions without power, heat, food, or even clean water. All over the Lonestar state people lost their access to clean water in their homes mainly due to busted pipes, water main breaks, and frozen or broken water lines. People didn’t have even limited access to clean bottled water due to grocery stores’ food shortages prior to the storm. Once the storm cleared, people were forced to take extreme measures to provide clean drinking water for themselves and their families. One of the methods was that people had to use the freshly fallen snow as a clean water resource: they would rake the snow off of their roofs and collect it from their yards into buckets to melt and later drink it. Millions were forced to go under “boil-water” advisories as utilities struggled to get water pressure back up to safe levels. Fortunately, for many people, these boil water advisories have been lifted. However, there are still hundreds of thousands who are still reaping the repercussions of this terrible disaster.
Even though this water crisis has recently garnered national attention, this is not the first time that America has had to face the challenges of a water crisis, specifically in the city of Flint, Michigan. In April 2014, Flint residents were starting to complain about the look, smell, and taste of their tap water. Even after city officials were shown jugs of tap water by frustrated residents, officials still deemed the water safe. It was ultimately realized that the Flint River, which served many purposes such as “an unofficial waste disposal site for treated and untreated refuse from the many local industries that have sprouted along its shores, from carriage and car factories to meatpacking plants and lumber and paper mills”, had contaminated the tap water with lead and therefore made the water unsafe.
Sources
https://www.insider.com/hundreds-of-thousands-of-southerners-still-dont-have-clean-water-2021-3
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/24/texas-water-winter-storm/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/01/us/texas-winter-storm-aftermath/index.html
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know#sec-summary
Picture Source
https://www.wpri.com/news/us-and-world/texas-power-outages-below-500000-but-water-crisis-persists/