Residents of Jackson, Miss., recently experienced a week without reliable water service. And an advisory to boil any water that does flow from faucets in that capital city of 150,000 people has been in place since late July. This is just some of the alarming drinking-water-related news that has surfaced as summer winds down in the U.S. Other reports have told of arsenic in tap water in a New York City public housing complex, potentially sewage- or runoff-related Escherichia coli bacteria in West Baltimore’s water supply and a lawsuit alleging neurological issues linked to thousands of liters of jet fuel that leaked into drinking water in Hawaii last year.
In the aftermath of the drinking-water contamination crisis that hit Flint, Mich., in 2014, a growing number of similar incidents have received national attention, eroding confidence in neglected drinking-water and wastewater treatment systems that once were considered among the world’s most sophisticated and robust. Some ground will be gained as billions of dollars from the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law start to flow to states for improvements to local water systems—
— source scientificamerican.com | Robin Lloyd | Sep 9, 2022