Surviving the Aquapocalypse

We are three days into the Boston water crisis of 2010, or the "Aquapocalypse" (because it's not a real crisis until the media foists said crisis with a clever name). An underground pipe that was funneling water from the Quabbin Reservoir in Weston to basically everywhere else burst apart on Saturday morning, prompting Governor Deval Patrick to issue a "state of emergency" in the Boston and the greater Boston area. More than 2 million people are without drinking water, myself included. The pipe is being worked on around the clock, but Gov. Patrick was on record yesterday stating that it may be "days, not weeks" before water could be tested and hopefully given it the clean bill of health for drinking. Or cooking. Or brushing your teeth.

Governor Patrick's statement of "days, not weeks" is a little disconcerting, because it implies that the timeline including weeks was, at one time, on the table. (Gah.) So at the moment, it looks like our immediate futures will be heavily dictated by availability of bottled water. While boiling water is a viable option, boiling requires the use of a stove, and the burst water pipe is flawlessly timed with the arrival of summer in Boston. 80 degree weather, humidity, and a small old fourth floor apartment without air conditioning does not a great equation make. So while the inner-environmentalist in me dramatically dies a little bit each time I use bottled water to wash a dish, I persevere. Because personal sadness is almost always preferable to personal projectile vomiting. Sorry, nature. You seem to be on the losing end, lately.

Water concerns are on the minds of the multitudes and has made urban living strange and eerily dystopian. As I was setting out on Saturday evening to meet up with some friends I met a city truck that was driving five miles per hour down the main road, lights flashing, and a man yelling into a bullhorn alerting the (probably already intoxicated) citizens of the area to not drink the water. People were flocking to local marts and food stores to buy water bottles en masse, and the giant local 24-hour CVS was already out of them. I was forced to buy a seltzer. But in spite of the impending obstacles in the hours after the water pipe debacle, spirits were high that evening. Many times I overheard people advocating alcohol's sanitizing effects proudly and loudly. Though hardships came in the form of a few ice-less drinks, many people that night danced and were merry in the face of adversity. And then most likely woke up hungover as they weren't supposed to drink the water. Irony.

The water crisis is affecting business as well. As shown in the first photo, Boston-area Starbucks are not brewing coffee. Let me say that again- Starbucks is not brewing coffee. We might as well just shut down as a city. As Anton Chekhov said, "any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out." And a day without coffee is barely a day at all.

I live near three CVS's. (Urbanity at its finest.) This picture is from the one located across the street that had just received a huge shipment of only one thing: Poland Spring water. Crates upon crates and stacked wall to wall of Poland Spring bottles, inside the cargo load of an eighteen wheeler truck. And this was their second shipment of the day. You do the math. It's a great time to be in the bottled water industry. It's a less good time to be... most everyone else. Water is flying off the shelves, as are paper plates and plastic forks and cups due to the recommendations not to ingest anything that was touched by the contaminated water. My roommate and I were forced to buy higher-end plastic plates, adding to a painful stab to my inner environmentalist's last dying breaths.

Though we are, for the good of society and general interaction, allowed to shower, it is highly recommended that we don't do many crucial daily survival tasks. I'll break it down for you.

Things We Can Do:

• Buy bottled water.
• Boil water, risk heat stroke via stove top, be forced to drink bottled water.
• Whine.

Things We Can't Do:

• Drink water from the city.
• Brush teeth.
• Wash dishes.
• Wash/eat produce.
• Be caffeinated in any form by the life-altering 15th century gift out of Yemen, the coffee bean.
• Avoid hearing the word "Aquapocalpyse" at least once an hour.

My roommate and I have come to terms that our probability of projectile vomiting in our future is nothing short of incredibly high. We helped a friend move into her new apartment and thus required water to assuage our collective thirsts from the aforementioned heavy lifting. Regrettably, we learned of the water contamination hours too late, as did many friends I have talked to. But science says water-born illnesses can take a week before they present symptoms, so there are reasons to remain hopeful, at least for the time being. We have been boycotting anything but boiled or bottled water since Saturday afternoon, so the only real threat lies in  running on autopilot and forgetting to not brush your teeth with faucet water. (I've had three near misses and one successful failure the morning after the state of emergency, because it's hard to be cognizant in the morning, especially hard when I haven't had any coffee.) We remain cautiously optimistic about our health because the media says that it won't kill us, just incapacitate us for a little while. Most importantly we have each other, (hopefully) robust immune systems, a case load of bottled water, and netflix. We'll be doing just fine.

This crisis is maybe a scratch on the surface in terms of being an actual life-or-death crisis for most people, but it has raised some issues for me. Never before have I experienced first-hand how crippling life would be in a world where water access is restricted, which was only brought to my attention because of the extremely mild inconvenience of having to go out to purchase some cheap and fully available bottled water. But there are cool organizations, like The Water Project, which you can donate to for only $10 dollars and that provides one person with drinking water for 10 years. So instead of spending money on yet another case of bottled water, I'm going to donate and then risk the heat stroke by boiling my water instead. Because life is infinitely more interesting when there's an element of danger. And when you're living through any kind of crisis where the media feels the need to add the suffix, "-pocalypse."