Where Water and Fire Meet (There’s Contamination).
Fire
Sadly, we’re just hitting wildfire season for 2020. We’ve come to expect fire disasters every year, but this time, in the midst of a pandemic, the impact is more severe for the residents of affected towns. Unfortunately, when the fires end there will be a longer-lasting tragedy as a result of drinking water contamination, caused by the fires. We have the technology and tools to address wildfire disasters, but we fail to address the connected but unintended consequences.
As at the time of writing this, over 60k people displaced, 154k customers are losing/have lost power and, 2M acres of land consumed by the fires. Investigators suggest the fires were caused by human actions including faulty exhaust systems from a diesel vehicle and (yes) ignitions from gender reveal party accidents, etc. Air quality advisories have been issued. If we needed any proof that climate change effects are here, natural systems are currently providing all we need to see.
As always, and unsurprisingly, we are paying attention to the obvious crisis in front of us. Yes, we need to address the fires, get them under control, and get people back to the semblance of normalcy that their lives will be once the fires are out. Yes, let’s address the immediate needs. But, if history provides any proof, we will come out from the current tragedy and go back to ‘normal’ and ignore the non-obvious problems that the fires would have caused. We’ll go back to rebuilding homes and repairing damaged property. And we’ll ignore the water contamination that will be lurking in the taps in California.
Water
From recent research carried out by experts at Purdue University and Manhattan College, wildfires burn vegetation, building structures, and plastic materials and deposit volatile organic compounds (contaminants) into the water distribution network. From the Tubbs and Camp fires, the researchers found that even without damage to the pipes that move water through towns, plastics decomposed due to the high temperatures of the wildfires enter into the distribution pipes. The contaminated water enters these pipes as high pipe pressures, which prevent water from flowing into pipes, drop to a point where water flows into the pipes. The water departments responsible for the region issued boil water advisories to ensure that nearby residents in undamaged homes did not drink contaminated water. Unfortunately, these boil water advisories, while they are a necessary step, do not prevent the likely ingestion of vaporized cancerous contaminants released into the air upon boiling.
Water Contamination
Unfortunately, even when the Apple Fires are brought under control (projected to happen on Aug 15th) there will be long lingering consequences on the water systems in these towns impacted. The open secret here is that 1M Californians currently lack access to clean drinking water. Wildfires and their aftereffects on distribution pipes will increase that number. While we focus on near term fire mitigation, we should also start doing the work of system adaptation to prevent the unintended water contamination consequences that happen as a result of said fire mitigation.
Systems and Solutions
The interconnectedness of systems, looming over us as actors in these systems, combined with our inadequate approaches of focusing on singular and immediate issues, prevent us from taking actions that reduce mid-long term downside risk. I’ve seen this short-term solutioning, at the expense of the long term, play out time and time again over the eighteen plus years of my career in the utility industry. It’s time we change. We have new advanced materials that can be used for water distribution pipes, we have new micro-water system designs that move us away from the centralized system with one single point of failure, and self-preservation off the back of the fires/pandemic has primed consumers to be open to new consumption approaches. We have the opportunity for a better future where millions aren’t subjected to contaminated water, what we need is the will to start taking action today.