Drinking Water
One of the remarkable statistics that I share about the Great Lakes is that they provide drinking water to over 40 million people in North America. In today’s post I want to build a foundation of knowledge on the topic of drinking water. In coming posts, I am going to do a series on some of the challenges around ensuring clean, safe, affordable tap water in the Great Lakes region.
Among the many things that Americans take for granted, access to clean water has to be one of the most significant. Water is at the core of basic human and economic survival. According to the United Nations, in 2022, 2.2 billion people still lacked access to safely managed drinking water (WHO/UNICEF 2023). This is more than 1 in 4 people on earth.
While we take it for granted, maintaining and managing a system that delivers this water is not a small task. It is also, a theme in my blog, not glamorous work.
To review the basics of water infrastructure, we’ll start with the full cycle of human water use from the Great Lakes (see here for a visual diagram). My 12-year old daughter recently said to me, “Did you know that we are drinking our pee from Lake Erie?” I was actually thrilled to have this conversation and to know that she understood that our water comes from Lake Erie. I find that many people in Cleveland do not know that if you are on Cleveland Water, your water is coming from Lake Erie. However, her statement is not true, other than in a conceptual way, given that drinking water is pulled from the Great Lakes and treated wastewater is returned to them.
Drinking water infrastructure in the Great Lakes can be essentially broken into three parts: (1) pipes that draw water from the lakes; (2) the water treatment plant that moves water through processes to make it safe to drink; and (3) the pipes that take the water from the water treatment plant to homes and businesses where it is consumed.
On a clear day, if you are along Lake Erie near Cleveland, you can look out and see the tower in the lake where water is pulled into pipes that bring it to shore. It’s called the 5-Mile Crib and it appears as an orange structure with a white top. It’s distant enough that many people mistaken it for a ship.
In the case of Cleveland, water is piped to four different water treatment plants. The work that happens there is simply essential. It is a 24/7/365 operation that requires constant surveillance and monitoring. I found this video about treating water from Lake Erie, although in the Toledo area, and much of the video was unwatchable for me due to the level of noise in the facility. Nonetheless, I was in deep admiration of the supervisor capability and confidently explaining the stages of the treatment process.
The pipes that carry water from plants to homes and businesses are often called service lines. I will have a future post focused on these pipes and a deeply concerning challenge around the Great Lakes with lead service lines. Stay tuned.
There are other challenges in the Great Lakes region with drinking water access that I’ve learned about in my role as an Ambassador for the Alliance for the Great Lakes. Our water infrastructure is aging and failing. Costs for repair or replacement are enormous. These costs are often disproportionately born by marginalized communities where infrastructure may be neglected due to lower property values, or by rural communities where small water agencies can’t keep pace with the scale of infrastructure systems.
There is an often unrecognized issue with water affordability and the dire consequences when water bills are not paid. A 2019 report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes found that Ohio has one of the most challenging situations of water cost versus income: Paying the average monthly water and sewer bill cost the equivalent of 8-10 hours of minimum wage labor. The Alliance lobbies at the federal, state, and local level to prevent water shutoff which, if you take a moment to think about it, is a terrible issue for basic human needs.
Last summer I shared that I participated in 4 Miles 4 Water, a run and walk event in Cleveland that fundraises for a local non-profit called Drink Local Drink Tap. The distance was chosen to raise awareness that many people in other parts of the world, often women and children, walk an average of 4 miles a day to retrieve water for consumption and use.
So, no matter if you are drinking Great Lakes water or otherwise, let’s resolve to be grateful for this incredible natural resource and the systems that maintain it for us.
