The human right to safe drinking water was made into international law by the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in 2010. The human right to sanitation was added as a distinct right by the UN General Assembly in 2015 [1]. Nevertheless, one in four people across the globe do not have access to safe drinking water. According to the World Health Organization, as of 2021, over 2 billion people live in water-stressed countries. This number is expected to increase due to climate change and population growth. Over 1 million people die each year from unsafe water—deaths which are mostly contained in the poorest regions on Earth [2]. As of 2022, 94% of drinking water facilities in high-income countries were labeled “safely managed.” In low-income countries, particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, this number is only 29% [3]. The 2021 Global Burden of Disease study found that of the top 10 risk factors for disease, unsafe drinking water was ranked 7th for children under the age of 5. Lead exposure in bone was ranked 10th for adults over the age of 70 [4].
This is not simply a “foreign” problem (although as global citizens, I would argue we should be more concerned about our overseas brethren). According to a report by the Environmental Protection Agency, there are more than 40,000 public water systems in the United States that are in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act [5]. A 2017 report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the nation’s drinking-water infrastructure a rating of D and assessed that the U.S. needs to invest $1 trillion in the next 25 years for upgrades [6]. A 2020 TIME article by Justin Worland interviewed people from Lowndes County, AL; Denmark, S.C; Inez, Ky; and the Navajo Nation, all of whom were impacted by unsafe drinking water. The message of his article is clear; impoverished and minority communities are impacted most, because they are easy for politicians and policymakers to ignore—until this systemic challenge manifests in catastrophe [7].
When we think of the water crisis (and lead exposure) in the United States, many remember Flint, Michigan, which became a source of national outrage in 2014. The city began supplying residents with highly corrosive, untreated water from the Flint River, which resulted in lead leaching out from aging pipes into thousands of homes. Nearly 9,000 children drank lead-contaminated water for 18 months. To this day, Flint has failed to meet court-ordered deadlines to check and replace lead service lines in eligible homes—work that was scheduled to be completed as of April 2024 [8]. However, since April 2018, bottled water is no longer provided free of charge to residents by the city government.
Let’s talk about bottled water for a moment. Of course, there are environmental and health risks from drinking bottled water; in 2021, only 6% of plastic was recycled,[9] and recent studies have found microplastics in 93% of bottled water [10]. However, in areas where there is no infrastructure to provide easy to access to potable water, bottled water is essential to survival. In 2023, Americans spent $44.6 billion on bottled water [11]. That’s money that went straight into the pockets of major corporations—who are draining a natural resource for profit! One example that gained media attention in recent years is Nestlé (now Blue Triton). In 2018, Nestlé sold $5.4 billion worth of bottled water in the United States. To access and pump groundwater from sites in various states, their application and permit fees cost as little as $115 for one-time use or $2,100 per year. In 2017, Nestlé pumped more than 130 million gallons of water a year (about 4.8 million bottles of water a day) from wells in northwestern Michigan. They paid $200 a year in fees. For every thousand gallons drawn from city-owned wells, they paid $3.50 [12].
We must protect water as a precious natural resource, especially as climate change worsens. The government must take action to limit corporate water consumption and impose hefty fines on corporations that violate the Clean Water Act. After all, BP paid the $60 billion in fines after spewing 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 [13]. This record-breaking amount ushered in an era of multibillion dollar corporate fines, but it is still worth asking: should a company that did irreparable environmental damage in the careless pursuit of profit be allowed to continue to exist? Today, BP is still worth $96.4 billion [14]. It is the role of governments, but nationally and internationally, to ensure that the billions of dollars going to corporate profit margins instead go to delivering global sustainable water management—a goal that the World Resources Institute estimated could be achieved for the cost of US$1.04 trillion annually from 2015 to 2030 [15].
[1] “Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: UN-Water.” UN, www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-sanitation. Accessed 30 July 2024.
[2] “Drinking Water Fact Sheet.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 13 Sept. 2023, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water.
[3] Hannah Ritchie, Fiona Spooner and Max Roser (2019) – “Clean Water” Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: ‘ https://ourworldindata.org/clean-water’ [Online Resource]
[4] Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Global Burden of Disease 2021: Findings from the GBD 2021 Study. Seattle, WA: IHME, 2024.
[5] EPA. “Public Water Sites with Any Violations.” Environmental Protection Agency, 2023, Accessed 31 July 2024.
[6, 7] Worland, Justin. “Why so Many Americans Don’t Have Access to Clean Water.” Time, Time, 20 Feb. 2020, time.com/longform/clean-water-access-united-states/.
[8] Denchak, Melissa. “Flint Water Crisis: Everything You Need to Know.” Be a Force for the Future, 16 Apr. 2024, www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know.
[9] “Top 25 Recycling Facts and Statistics for 2022.” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/recycling-global-statistics-facts-plastic-paper/. Accessed 31 July 2024.
[10] Pied, Tatum. “Bottled Water: The Human Health Consequences of Drinking from Plastic.” Clean Water Action, 26 July 2024, cleanwater.org/2020/07/29/bottled-water-human-health-consequences-drinking-plastic.
[11] “U.S. Bottled Water Market Size, Share: Industry Report, 2030.” U.S. Bottled Water Market Size, Share | Industry Report, 2030, www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-bottled-water-market-report. Accessed 31 July 2024.
[12] Ngo, Hope. “Nestle’s Water Controversy, Explained.” Mashed, Mashed, 27 Dec. 2021, www.mashed.com/717227/nestles-water-controversy-explained/.
[13] Uhlmann, David and Jeffrey F. Liss. “BP Paid a Steep Price for the Gulf Oil Spill but for the US a Decade Later, It’s Business as Usual.” The Conversation, 8 May 2024, theconversation.com/bp-paid-a-steep-price-for-the-gulf-oil-spill-but-for-the-us-a-decade-later-its-business-as-usual-136905.
[14] “BP Net Worth 2010-2024: BP.” Macrotrends, www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BP/bp/net-worth. Accessed 31 July 2024.
[15] Strong, C., S. Kuzma, S. Vionnet, and P. Reig. 2020. “Achieving Abundance: Understanding the Cost of a Sustainable Water Future.” Working Paper. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. Available online at www.wri.org/ publication/achieving-abundance.