Unsafe drinking water, in the developing world, and in this world.

Louisville, KY shoe donation drive to provide safe, clean drinking water for developing countries - http://goo.gl/Uwe5



Pescadero, CA farm owner Marchi gets two more weeks to remove nitrates from farm laborers water supply; endless delays - http://goo.gl/gQOI

I often see news stories like the one in the first Tweet above – good people in America working hard through one means or another to help provide clean safe drinking water to some developing nation. And what a worthy goal that is – unsafe drinking water kills over 3.5 million people each year, almost half of which are children under 5 years old, and makes millions more sick. That’s a horrible, horrible tragedy, and it’s great that people here in this country spend their time, give their effort, and donate their money and materials to help try and save some of those lives and alleviate some of that pain and suffering. It makes you proud to be an American, and I salute those people.


The news story behind the second Tweet above makes me not so proud to be an American. Pescadero, CA is a small farm town about 20 miles west of the Silicon Valley, home to dot com and other computer industry multi-millionaires and billionaires. The laborers at this particular farm were supplied by the farm owner with drinking water containing 6 times the Maximum Contaminant Level of nitrate, enough to kill an infant. And this is not the only place this is happening; nitrates in particular, but other contaminants as well, are a serious and growing problem all over California and the country. When a relatively affluent, large metropolitan area is faced with these issues, the municipal water supply invests the money to treat the water and make it safe for the people living there to consume. But when these issues occur in rural areas, areas inhabited by the poor, by farm laborers and migrant workers, there is no money many times to provide treatment. And since these people have no political voice, since they are not only “The huddled masses”, but the hidden masses, many times no one comes to their aid. They are either forced to consume water with unsafe levels of contaminants or spend an inordinate amount of their income on bottled water. And this is not in some developing, third world country; it’s here, in our backyards, very likely just a few miles from where you now sit. This is an even worse tragedy, which in a country as great as ours, where most of us take a safe water supply for granted, there are those who may be ill and possibly die for lack of clean water.


I still think that good Americans taking the time to help those in developing countries is really great; they really are to be commended. But it would be nice to see a few more headlines extolling the virtues of those Americans who help people living right here in America who struggle with the same problems as those in the developing world.