lead in the water
it's not just flint, it's not some surprise tragedy, it's a result of *ongoing* choices
It is estimated that 80% of homes in Chicago have water pipes made of lead right now. As pipes corrode, lead leaks into the water, and it is broadly agreed upon that no amount of lead in water is safe. Exposure to lead as a child is associated with long-term damage to the brain and nervous system and developmental issues. In adults, it is associated with decreased kidney function, cardiovascular effects, and reproductive problems.
With approximately 400,000 lead pipes in the ground in Chicago right now, might we expect some urgency from the government? To be able to go about my day, I have to believe that the vast majority of people would agree that lead water pipes are a serious health hazard that must be addressed with urgency. Even the most dedicated both-sidesing neutral centrist cannot possibly find a pro-neurotoxin stance.
The city of Chicago can proudly point to its nice website and its subsidizing of replacement water lines. Last year, Lori Lightfoot openly panned her predecessors for “kicking the can down the road” on this one. We’re addressing the problem now!
As of September, 180 pipes have been replaced.
In The Guardian’s recent report of “shocking” lead levels in Chicago’s water, they spoke to a resident trying to apply for the free lead service replacement program, and spent a year attempting to comply with the paperwork requirements, which included tax returns, pay stubs, social security cards, driver’s licenses, and school transcripts for every member of the family. When uploading said documents, the city’s portal crashed. This is bureaucracy, and it is also violence.
It takes serious time and energy to obtain all this documentation. During that time, people still have to drink their lead-contaminated water. Their children still have to drink their lead-contaminated water. They will be dealing with the health and ensuing social and economic consequences of this for the rest of their lives. They will be paying the medical bills. Red tape is red in the same way blood is red on the hands of our leaders who spend their time worrying about budgets rather than the lives of their constituents.
The Illinois state law called the Lead Service Line Replacement and Notification Act has set the ambitious deadline for lead pipe removal of… 2077 for Chicago. You read that right. 55 years from now. The City of Chicago has 5 years to produce a 50 year plan.
Plans take time, infrastructure takes time, everything costs money. These are all truisms that are frequently wielded as an excuse for a complete lack of political urgency and imagination. To tout a lead replacement plan that could feasibly outlive me as a meaningful solution is deeply embarrassing. There are a few key assumptions that constrain the imagination and leave us with these types of “solutions.”
Without constantly pointing them out and fighting against them, we risk being complacent with a status quo that takes most peoples’ lives as completely expendable. Identifying these assumptions in ourselves and those around us and asking how we might instead expand our belief in what is possible is vital to building a truly better future, for everyone.
The austerity mindset that underpins our approach to governmental programs is defined by deprivation, by a belief that there are people who deserve basic rights like clean water and that there are people who don’t. We have to save money by sorting them out accordingly, by demanding proof of their worthiness. Please don’t ask about how much it costs to do that, or how morally reprehensible the harm enacted by this gatekeeping is! Please do not inquire about why money matters more than literal human lives! All of this is obscured by mundanity and administrative language, but I promise that if you found out your child might suffer permanent brain damage from lead poisoning, it would not feel so mundane to you.
Another problem baked into our political systems and our thinking is a desire for appealing and intellectually interesting solutions, perhaps driven by the fact that for many in power this is more of a game than a matter of survival. If what you want is something that will fit nicely into your quarterly or annual report, or will help your midterm election prospects, you will never arrive at the idea of serious community investment or the fundamental restructuring of exploitative systems. You will arrive at a branding exercise in which you make a website advertising water from Lake Michigan as “Chicagwa.”
There is the obvious demand to make here: the lead pipes need to be replaced faster. In the meantime water filtration should be made not just free, but genuinely accessible without fifty hoops to jump through. But let’s think even bigger for a moment—Compromises will need to be made so let’s not make them preemptively in our own heads.
We cannot spend the rest of our lives playing whack-a-mole with various public health crises when they are all symptoms of much deeper problems with our institutions and their incentives and priorities. It’s not a one-off water crisis. You probably associate lead in the water with Flint, Michigan, but a 2016 Reuters investigation identified nearly 3,000 other areas in the US with higher levels of lead. Before Flint, there was the 2001-2004 DC water crisis, during which the CDC claimed there was no risk from high lead content in water. The House would later find this “scientifically indefensible.”
Also, why are there so many lead pipes in Chicago and other US cities? The Lead Industries Association invested heavily in promoting the use of lead pipes and got them required in many city building codes up until 1986. Millions of Americans are now bearing the costs of the greed of lead companies.
There are people who deserve better now, and we have to fight for their immediate relief. But we cannot become completely caught up in scrabbling for the bare minimum all the time─there is a world where public health is truly public, where everyone is afforded the opportunity to live a good life.
The questions we ask need to be as expansive as the answers we hope to find. What would it look like for clean water to be a public good? What would it look like for there to be serious and equitable long-term investment in the infrastructure of our cities? What would it look like for profit-driven companies to not exert incredible influence over our politics to the detriment of millions of people? What would it look like if we honestly and wholeheartedly subscribed to the belief that everyone’s life is worth protecting and caring for?
Assigning You Reading
It is my own embarrassment that I haven’t read any Octavia Butler yet but I swear I will soon, and I enjoyed this Vulture piece on her life!
“In Amazing Coincidence, Jeff Bezos Makes Meaningless Announcement He’s “Giving Way” Fortune After Stories of Racist Worker Abuse, Mass Amazon Layoffs” - Headline says it all.
After you read this, please google image search what “VeeFriends” look like and comment your reaction. PLEASE. Three Martini Lunch paradox.
I saw Cheryl Strayed’s byline and only knew her as woman who went on a long hike played by Reese Witherspoon, but damn can she write and damn what set her on that 1,100 mile hike is gripping to read.
Who gets quality leisure time? Take a guess. Maybe the goal is just to be shamelessly acquired.
Shoutout to Fumika for sending me this piece on Chinese dance, mirrors, and the complexity of gauging authenticity.
Thanks to Karishma for sending me this piece on not keeping a diary YET, it went well with this essay on deleting the old versions of yourself. Also, I know nothing of the art of seduction but I loved reading Melissa Febos on the matter.
This is powerful stuff. Thank you.