How Do You Fight the Coronavirus Without Running Water? – The New York Times

Several weeks ago, Larry Welch and his mother, Mary Ann, contracted Covid-19 and died. In the midst of a pandemic in which one of the first lines of defense is vigorous hand washing, they were among more than two million Americans who lack running water.

Mr. Welch was a disabled Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm. His mother lived in Arizona in a remote corner of the Navajo reservation, and her son often visited her to help out by cutting firewood, caring for her sheep and hauling her drinking water.

Hauling water required Mr. Welch to leave the safety of his home, another line of defense against the coronavirus, to fill a 200-gallon tank in his truck from a public tap and drive 90 minutes to his mothers house. In mid-March, he probably also brought the virus to his mother without knowing it. Weeks later, their family and community are mourning their loss.

They are two of the more than 60,000 Americans who have succumbed to Covid-19 so far. I cant help feeling that their deaths were especially senseless. DigDeep, the organization I lead, was working to install indoor plumbing for Mary Ann Welch through our Navajo Water Project. Just days after surveying her home, we were forced to suspend operations because of the pandemic. If we had completed that work, perhaps theyd be alive.

More than 2.2 million Americans, through no fault of their own, lack access to the clean running water and basic indoor plumbing the rest of us take for granted. Every state is home to entire communities facing this virus without being even able to wash their hands, but the federal government has yet to form an emergency response that addresses their safety.

Its no accident that these places tend to be communities of color. Decades ago, they were bypassed by government initiatives to build water infrastructure, and federal funding for water projects is now just a tiny fraction of what it once was. Today, race is the single strongest predictor of whether you have access to a tap or a toilet in your home. Nationwide, Indigenous households are 19 times more likely than white households to lack access to complete plumbing, while African-American and Latinx households are nearly twice as likely.

It is too soon to say what impact the lack of clean running water has had on the spread of the coronavirus in most of these communities. But in the Navajo Nation, more than 27,000 square miles in the four-corners region of the Southwest, more than a third of homes lack running water, and there are more Covid-19 cases per capita than in any state other than New York and New Jersey.

In parts of Californias Central Valley, where tap water is too tainted by agricultural chemicals and other contaminants to drink, mothers have formed water-sharing groups on Facebook to get around the bottled water purchasing limits at many stores. Remote communities in Alaska rely on washeterias shared laundry and shower facilities that typically provide two washers and two dryers for an entire village. That makes social distancing difficult, to say the least. And across the country, the more than 500,000 Americans experiencing homelessness face some of the most difficult barriers to water access.

These conditions are making the virus more powerful than it should be, endangering all of us. But this is not an intractable challenge. We can close Americas water access gap.

To address the immediate crisis, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should work together to distribute packaged drinking water to communities without water, using existing natural-disaster response protocols. These agencies should also partner with states and municipalities to provide water deliveries and set up hand-washing stations.

In the meantime, water donations can help fill the gap. Nestl recently provided my group with 248,000 gallons of bottled water, which we distributed through Navajo agencies and local partners to about 30,000 people across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But much more water is urgently needed.

And as Congress sets priorities for future infrastructure and stimulus bills, it should prioritize water infrastructure investments that target these communities. Investing in our water system is one of the smartest ways to help jump-start the economic recovery, creating jobs and generating economic activity. Most important, it will make us more resilient to future outbreaks of the coronavirus or another viral threat and provide those without water the health and dignity we all deserve.

Larry and Mary Ann Welch might have had a better chance at fighting the virus if they had running water at home. Lets make sure every American does.

George McGraw is the founder of DigDeep, a nonprofit focused on providing water access.

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How Do You Fight the Coronavirus Without Running Water? - The New York Times