BBC: Reminder Don't Take Plumbing for Grante

This short video makes me feel guilty.

I live near the end of a long archipelago chain of islands connected by 42 bridges. Not a day goes by that my wife or I don’t thank the gods for the luxury of running clean water out of our fixtures. That water comes from the Biscayne Aquifer up on the mainland. How much longer before that aquifer runs dry up there? We are living on borrowed time in the Keys.

Making the supply of freshwater a critical worry: The City of Key West caters to Miami cruise lines by selling freshwater - piped over 140 miles from the mainland - at a discount to what Key West residents pay. “Park your floating hotel here, and we will pump you up with freshwater while removing your wastewater for treatment at our overtaxed sewer plant.”

The ungrateful residents of Key West recently voted in a citywide referendum to no longer allow cruise ships of over 1100 people to dock at our ports. Had the referendum been enforced, 90-95% of cruise ships in American mainland ports would no longer be able to call Key West port. And yet, the State Government in the bribed pockets of cruise ship dynasties met in Tallahassee and overturned Key West’s referendum. So giant floating hotels returned to the Keys and renewed their degradation of the reef.

These new dockings also pollute the air in Key West as their smokestacks spew bunker oil effluvia. Environmentalists define bunker oil as “the dregs” of a barrel of oil, i.e., the dirtiest oil.
On days with a cruise ship down at the docks, the black smoke from one ship’s always burning generators are belching what 40,000 - 50,000 non-EV automobiles stuck in traffic would spew.

Cruise ships calling Key West port means the Keys Life is returning to a shortening wave of goodbye to what was once a slice of paradise. (I’m glad to have seen the Keys in the 90s before it all started going to hell, environmentally speaking.) The comeback of ever-larger cruise ships means increasing pressure on water and sewage services and supplies provided by the compliant city hospitality businesses wanting the maximum tourists in minimum time, clogging their storefronts and bars downtown.

Hence, the clean waters of the reefs nearest our Keys during COVID are changing back to cruise ship polluted waters. The gin clarity during COVID when no cruise ships plied our waters becomes a murkier opacity by the month.

Listen to me. I complain like a spoiled baby at the nipple’s end of water we can drink by turning on a faucet.

Back in India, people go through hell for a bucket of polluted water. Sometimes villagers arrive at the "replenished well (wait until you read below to learn how the dry well becomes a watering hole), and there is no water. Older people who cannot make the trek to this mudwater are going thirsty.

These poor souls. This short video hurts my heart. I complain, but I cannot imagine me or my wife going through such hardship just to continue living here in the Keys:

BBC Headline: India water: Hundreds jostle to reach well

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-india-61755730

People in Khadimal village in the western Indian state of Maharashtra have been forced to risk their lives every day for one bucket of water.

The village is in Amravati district in Maharashtra’s drought-prone Vidarbha region, which also faces frequent heat waves.

The residents say the local village council sends tankers twice or thrice a day. The tanker drivers pour water into a well, triggering a desperate rush to fill buckets before the stock runs dry.

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