While Donald Trump rails about funding and building a wall — and has lied to Americans about fixing our broken infrastructure, yet another U.S. city is attempting to cope with a water contamination crisis. This time it is Newark, New Jersey, the largest city in the state, which is also majority Black and Latinx.
Lead Crisis in Newark Grows, as Bottled Water Distribution Is Bungled
Worries about the safety of the drinking water in New Jersey’s largest city have raised comparisons to Flint, Mich.
NEWARK — A growing crisis over lead contamination in drinking water gripped Newark on Wednesday as tens of thousands of residents were told to drink only bottled water, the culmination of years of neglect that has pushed New Jersey’s largest city to the forefront of an environmental problem afflicting urban areas across the nation.
Urgent new warnings from federal environmental officials about contamination in drinking water from aging lead pipes spread anxiety and fear across much of Newark, but the municipal government’s makeshift efforts to set up distribution centers to hand out bottled water were hampered by confusion and frustration.
State and local officials said they were making free water available to 15,000 of the city’s 95,000 households, and hundreds of people waited in long lines in the summer heat to pick up cases of water. But officials had to halt the distribution temporarily after discovering that some of the water exceeded its best-by date.
The intensifying worry about the safety of Newark’s drinking water has raised comparisons to Flint, Mich, where dangerous levels of lead led to criminal indictments against state and local officials and forced residents to rely on bottled water.
The story is getting both local and national coverage:
NJTV News Newark residents lined up to get bottled water at four locations across the city Monday afternoon in the wake of a warning by federal authorities that those living in homes with old lead service lines should not drink their tap water.
Would the water crisis currently happening in Newark be getting as little attention if it were in the town of Bedminster where the president has a golf course? We talk to New Jersey reporters Karen Yi and Nick Corasaniti.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has been leading the legal battles:
Water issues in our communities are not just about contamination.
Read the full report — Water/Color: A Study of Race and the Water Affordability Crisis in America's Cities
In recent years, significant strides have been made in recognizing the human right to water, as well as in-creased attention to the growing problem of water unaffordability. However, few studies have made an explicit link between race and the affordability of water or have interrogated the connection between the failure to pay a water bill and the loss of Black home ownership. This report does both. It begins with a historical overview of the construction of U.S. urban water systems and the development of water policy from the late 18th century to the present, including a discussion of Black access (or lack thereof) to water systems and services over time. We explain the current water affordability crisis impacting Black communities and identify failing infrastructure as the biggest contributing factor to rising costs. To demonstrate the disproportionate impact of rising water bills on Black communities, this report includes a review of the affordability crises in Baltimore and Cleveland. We demonstrate how water costs are allocated in each area, document the rise in water costs to residents in recent years, and analyze each jurisdiction’s use of water liens for unpaid bills. Finally, we provide a framework for potential litigation and policy solutions to challenge water lien sales and service disconnections that have a disproportionate impact on Black communities. With this report, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) and its Thurgood Marshall Institute hope to equip water equality advocates with sufficient context and background about our waterworks systems and ways to challenge—and change—local government actions that impede Black access to water and sewer systems. We also wish to convey and instill an appreciation and awareness for the role water regulation has played in shaping our communities, reinforcing municipal power, and perpetuating racial inequities.
Environmental racism is being countered by the Environmental Justice movement.
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