Climate chaos is here. Let’s talk through our options, choices, decisions, and plans, and share if we’ve got anything we think can help with survival. Each week I’ll present a question or a topic that’s about something every one of us is likely to face, and see if we can figure out ways to deal with it together.
Week One’s question was Do You Stay or Do You Go?
Week Two: What Is Your Timeline?
Week Three: What Skill Do You Need To Learn?
Week Four: How Will You Deal With Flooding?
This week’s question is What About Potable Water?
My Potable Water Situation Is Not Great
Assuming we eventually get cut off from Hetch Hetchy (a good assumption as it’s 167 miles away), my ability to find local potable water in San Francisco is limitied. We live in an apartment. The closest true lake is not much above sea level and is the site of a former shooting range, so besides urban runoff and pollution, there’s Pb contamination. The Chain of Lakes in Golden Gate Park are artificial and not potable (one even produces mint green foam below a small waterfall). There are other lakes within a few miles but these also are not potable and are victims of historic dumping.
We live in earthquake country, so we keep a water supply for a minimum of 3-days in our apartment and garage space. Our emergency water is in large glass jars, well-padded, in 3 different locations, and we replace the water every year. We probably have enough water for 5 days, depending on the type of emergency (for example, in a heat emergency the supply would be used up faster) and depending on how the emergency hits us (flooding, for example, would wipe out the 1/3 of our water supply in the garage space).
What About Non-Potable Water?
We have lots of access to non-potable water via the Golden Gate Park and other local lakes, assuming the lakes are still there (i.e. no devastating drought). We have filtration devices and purification chems in our earthquake kits that would greatly extend our water supply if we can access these non-potable water sources.
We also have access to an unlimited supply of saltwater. This will be useful for some emergencies (cooling off or fire) but would be difficult to use for drinking. Should we somehow still have electricity, distillation is doable. Our sunlight is usually inadequate for home solar distillation.
And There Are Long-Term Issues
Emergency filtration devices have limits for how long they are effective and they cannot filter out everything. The dirtier or more polluted the water source, the less time the filter will work.
You can construct filtration devices; most instructions need some kind of charcoal or activated carbon, sand, gravel, and cotton balls, though a number of sources say if you’ve got nothing else sari silk will do for some basic filtering. But with these devices all you’re filtering out for sure are the things you can see and smell, and some you can taste. We now have widespread nanoplastic contamination of the biosphere, pharmaceutical and drug metabolites downstream of cities and towns, and heavy metal contamination of many water sources, and Pb in water tastes sweet.
With a limited water supply and a large population, the non-potable water would be rapidly used up and, as it was used up, the remaining water would be more and more contaminated.
So What’s Your Potable Water Situation?