Biden’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Could Be a Step Towards Improving America’s Aging Water Infrastructure and Protecting It From Climate Change

In September of 2021, Vox released an article exploring the drinking water crisis impacting millions of people across the country. In this article, Li Zhou performs an in-depth case study on the drinking water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, specifically. The resident that Zhou interviewed has been using bottled water for cooking and drinking for years due to the city’s unsafe and frequently interrupted drinking water service. This past winter, a sudden period of extreme cold caused pipes to burst and left approximately 40,000 Jackson residents without access to water for over two weeks. Many cities around the United States are facing similar consequences of poor water infrastructure. A report from McKinsey found that, on average, anywhere from 14-18% of total daily treated, potable drinking water in the United States is lost due to leaking, with some water systems reporting much higher loss rates of over 60%. 

Water infrastructure in the United States is extremely outdated, with the average US water-network pipe being at least 45 years old and some cast-iron pipes being over 100 years old. Aside from the aging water infrastructure, the increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by climate change are expected to further strain drinking water supplies around the country and the world. Replacing water infrastructure is a massive but necessary project that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates will take $839 million/year to replace and monitor. However, the United States has historically been slow to adapt and invest in new technology to improve health, safety, and efficiency. 

Aside from improvements to the physical infrastructure, researchers have also argued that stronger enforcement of drinking water regulations is essential for improving the overall safety of drinking water in the United States. Many water systems around the country do not comply with requirements outlined in the Clean Water Act. However, they have been allowed to continue to operate due to inadequate enforcement of the Act. Another issue threatening drinking water supplies is the lack of regulations for discharging wastewater. Improper wastewater discharge can result in excessive amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen entering waterways which causes algae blooms.

More recently, the House passed Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes a total of $1 trillion in funding to repair aging infrastructure, fund new climate initiatives, expand access to high-speed internet service, and more. The bill has specifically carved out $48 billion to fund water-related repairs, such as replacing lead pipes and studying emerging water contaminants. Individual states have quite a bit of freedom in determining how such funding will be spent. Still, the passing of this bill is a step in a positive direction towards improving the nation’s drinking water infrastructure. 

Climate Change Projections For 2030 Estimate That Majority Of The World's Population Will Live In Coastal Areas Which Are Exposed To Floods, Storms, and Tsunamis

A publication from Nature demonstrates that satellite observations of floods reveal that the proportion of the population exposed to floods has grown by 24% globally since the turn of the century. That is 10 times more than scientists previously thought, and they estimate that by 2030, climate and demographic change will add 25 new countries to the 32 already experiencing increasing floods and harsh weather conditions. 

The United Nations has chosen to increase international cooperation for developing countries as the theme of this year’s World Tsunami Awareness Day, on November 5th. The UN Secretary-General designated November 5th as World Tsunami Awareness day back in December 2015, and it is meant to call on all countries, international bodies, and civil society to increase understanding of the deadly threat and share innovative approaches to reduce risks. 

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, says that “rising sea levels caused by the climate emergency will further exacerbate the destructive power of tsunamis. We must limit warming to 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial averages and invest at scale in the resilience of coastal communities.” Many regions that experience rapid urbanization and growing tourism are prone to tsunamis, and it puts even more people in harm’s way. 

For World Tsunami Awareness Day in 2021, the theme will be the Sendai Seven Campaign. The Sendai Seven Campaign –"7 targets, 7 years" was launched in 2016 by the United Nations Secretary-General, with the main objective of promoting the seven targets of the Sendai Seven Campaign over seven years, which are the following: 

• 2016 – Target (a): Substantially reduce global disaster mortality by 2030, aiming to lower the average per 100,000 global mortality rate in the decade 2020- 2030 compared to the period 2005-2015

• 2017 – Target (b): Substantially reduce the number of people affected globally by 2030, aiming to lower the average global figure per 100,000 in the decade 2020- 2030 compared to the period 2005-2015;

• 2018 – Target (c): Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030;

• 2019 – Target (d): Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, among them health and educational facilities, including through developing their resilience by 2030;

• 2020 – Target (e): Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020;

• 2021 – Target (f): Substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of the present Framework by 2030;

• 2022 – Target (g): Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people by 2030.

Tsunamis are rare events but can be extremely deadly. In the past 100 years, 58 of them have claimed more than 260,000 lives or an average of 4,600 per disaster - more than any other natural hazard.

Climate Change and Population Increase Stimulates the Impending Water Crisis

Improved water management, monitoring, and forecasting are needed in the face of a looming global water crisis, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and partners said in a report published on Tuesday. 

Floods, droughts, and other water-related hazards increase due to climate change, but at the same time, the number of people experiencing “water stress” continues to rise. 3.6 billion people globally had inadequate access to water for one month per year, and this number is expected to surpass 5 billion by 2050. 

Petteri Taalas, the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General, says that “Increasing temperatures are resulting in global and regional precipitation changes, leading to shifts in rainfall patterns and agricultural seasons, with a major impact on food security and human health and well-being.” This past year alone has seen extreme, water-related events. Across Asia, extreme rainfall caused massive flooding in Japan, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and India. 

Flood-related disasters have risen by 134% compared to the last two decades, and most deaths and economic losses occurred in Asia. The number and duration of droughts also increased by 29% over the past two decades, and most deaths from droughts were in Africa. 

In the past 20 years, terrestrial water storage - the summation of all water on the land surface and subsurface, including soil moisture, snow, and ice - has dropped at a rate of 1 cm per year. Some of the biggest changes are occurring in Antarctica and Greenland, but many areas are experiencing significant water losses in areas that had traditionally provided water supply. 

Overall, the world is behind schedule on the UN Sustainable Development Goal No. 6 (SDG 6) to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. 3.6 billion people lacked safely managed sanitation services, and 2.3 billion people lacked basic hygiene services. Seventy-five countries reported water efficiency levels below average, including 10 with extremely low levels. 

A WMO assessment of 101 countries for which data are available found that:

• There is inadequate interaction among climate services providers and information users in 43% of WMO Members;

• Data is not collected for basic hydrological variables in approximately 40% of them;

• Hydrological data is not made available in 67% of them;

• End-to-end riverine flood forecasting and warning systems are absent or inadequate in 34% of those who provided data;

• End-to-end drought forecasting and warning systems are lacking or inadequate in 54% of them.

China Enters a Major International Climate Agreement

Chinese chemical companies must stop emitting HFC-23, a super-pollutant and an unwanted byproduct of the production of hydrochlorofluorocarbon-22. China and India dominate the global HFC-22 production, with 75% in 2017. China recently began enforcing the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The agreement requires China and other countries to stop emitting HFC-23, which is 14,600 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere. 

In an address to the U.N. General Assembly, Chinese president Xi Jinping made a new climate commitment not to build any new coal-fired power projects abroad. China will also increase financial support for more green energy projects. The pledge came hours after United States President Joe Biden announced a plan to double financial aid to poorer nations to $11.4 billion by 2024 to help those countries switch to cleaner energy and cope with global warming’s worsening effects.

“We need to accelerate a transition to a green and low-carbon economy,” Xi said in a speech at the U.N. General Assembly. “We will make every effort to meet these goals. China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”

The United Nations first targeted HFC-23 emissions in China in 2006, when a U.N. program known as the Clean Development Mechanism or CDM began incentivizing HCFC-22 producers to destroy their HFC-23 emissions. The program paid HCFC-22 producers in China and other developing countries emission reduction credits, traded with developed countries to meet their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. 

Although China has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ten companies in China built new HFC-22 capacity after April 2015 or are currently building new production facilities. In addition, three companies have also expanded or are in the process of expanding their HCFC-22 production capacity.

However, in another encouraging sign, the Bank of China said that it would no longer provide financing for new coal mining and coal power projects outside of China. 

IPCC Climate Change Report Finds That Major Climate Changes Are Inevitable and Irreversible

The United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to inform national governments about the science and potential impacts of climate change. Humans have heated the planet by roughly 1.1°C since the 19th century, mainly from burning coal, oil, and gas for energy. 

The consequences of global warming can be seen this summer alone, with heatwaves across the US and Canada, floods devastating Germany and China, and wildfires are raging out of control across the world. Unless immediate, rapid, and large-scale action is taken to reduce emissions, the report says, the average global temperature is likely to reach or cross the 1.5°C warming threshold within 20 years. 

Some key points from the IPCC report:

• Global surface temperature was 1.09C higher in the decade between 2011-2020 than between 1850-1900.

• The past five years have been the hottest on record since 1850

• The recent rate of sea level rise has nearly tripled compared with 1901-1971

• Human influence is "very likely" (90%) the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea-ice

• It is "virtually certain" that hot extremes including heat waves have become more frequent and more intense since the 1950s, while cold events have become less frequent and less severe

While this report is more clear and confident about the downsides to warming, the scientists are more hopeful that if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, we can halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures. 

Reaching net-zero involves reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible using clean technology, then burying any remaining releases using carbon capture and storage or absorbing them by planting trees.

According to a draft of an upcoming IPCC scientific report, some lifestyle changes could also cut emissions twice the size of Brazil’s current emissions by 2030. Changes include heating and cooling set-point adjustments, reducing appliance use, shifting to human-centered mobility and public transit, reduced air travel, and improved recycling. The draft IPCC found that individual behavior change in isolation cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but individuals can contribute to overcoming barriers and enable climate change mitigations. 

The full second report, set to be released in 2022, will detail how climate change might affect human society, such as coastal cities, farms, or health care systems. A third report, also expected next year, will explore more fully strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming.