In my community, I am blessed to have easy access to clean water right from my own house. However, this is a privilege that not everyone in the world and the US shares. Access to safe and clean water still remains very unequal to this day. However, certain racial groups suffer more from a lack of access to water.
In 2015, the city of Flint in Michigan underwent a drinking water crisis. At that time, Flint's drinking water contained many harmful contaminants, including lead. In some areas, the concentration of lead in the water was 100 times higher than the EPA's "action level", which is the concentration where public safety measures should begin to take place. However, rather than address the issue with the drinking water, government officials decided to downplay the situation, stating that the brown and stinking water was safe to drink. This lack of action by the government in this incident could possibly be attributed to systemic discrimination, as Flint has a large African American population. This trend of counties with higher populations of color having more drinking water violations is seen throughout the United States.
Beyond African American communities, indigenous communities are also being affected. One example of this is in the Santee Sioux Nation, a native tribe located in Nebraska. The Santee Sioux Nation hasn't had access to clean drinking water in four years. Their water contained more than 50 times the manganese than amount considered safe. Consuming too much manganese can result in problems with memory, attention, and motor skills. The native tribe couldn't try boiling the water as well, as that would result in the manganese becoming more concentrated. The tribal leadership that native tribes have is unable to solve the problem, as they do not have the necessary infrastructure to properly fix the problem and clean the drinking water.
The problems that these racially vulnerable groups have with access to clean drinking water stem from the historical context. Communities of color in the United States have had a long history of environmental inequality. For example, in the summer of 1978, the state of North Carolina decided to build a landfill in the majority-Black and economically struggling community of Warren County. This landfill was meant to hold the 60,000 tons of contaminated soil accumulated. The residents of Warren County fought against the landfill through organized protests, establishing community groups, and attending the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) meetings. However, it didn't matter, as the protests did not stop the establishment of the landfill.
The lack of access to clean water greatly harms communities of color. In indigenous communities, it puts a strain on tribal leadership. Since environmental education isn't accessible in Native American tribes, the leadership worries about the negative effects of the water. In addition, since tribes are normally very small (the Santee Sioux Nation consists of less than 1000 people), funding for larger infrastructure projects in order to clean the water is largely impossible. For example, the Santee Sioux Tribe's most preferred solution is to pump the treated water from South Dakota into Santee from across the Missouri. However, this would be impossible without outside funding, since the price tag for the project is forty million dollars.
In conclusion, while a lack of access to clean water could be found in any community, it is most prevalent in African American and indigenous communities. This is due to the historical context of segregation and systemic racism. In addition, due to the lack of resources, most of these communities cannot do anything about the problem they face.