Not being polite
Living in the future (part two)
Living in the future means adapting to restrictions which have not yet become the norm for most of the people reading this newsletter.
We live in the future, where nothing truly goes away.
Once, while our neighbors were over visiting us, their kid asked how we wash things. The adults tried to quiet this curiosity, embarrassed that it wasn’t polite. But we are eager to explain how gravity powers our sink and shower, and how it nourishes the cacao planted downhill. None of our wastewater is wasted, and nothing is irrigated.
(Linked below is our March 2024 newsletter where we talk about the 80+ year old cacao trees on our farm and how we utilize all of the greywater we generate).
Each day, our “household” uses a total of 4 buckets (those are 5-gallon buckets) of water. That total includes what we use to water the dogs, chickens, and saplings, as well as the wastewater we generate from washing our bodies, clothes, and dishes.
The average American household uses 16 of those 5-gallon buckets each day—just to flush the toilet. The EPA says that toilet water is the greatest domestic usage of fresh water in America. An average American household uses a staggeringly privileged 66 buckets of water, per day.1
Our limited water-capacity shrinks what we are able to accomplish. Since the neighborhood lost access to municipal water at the beginning of the summer, the lack of water has affected what we are able to take on. It’s made working in the summer heat nearly impossible, and has completely stopped, going on 5 months, the construction plans we were in the middle of when the Fear Hole first opened up.
(Linked below is our July 2024 newsletter where we introduce the Fear Hole).
On a larger scale, localities and countries deprived of water are limited in the ways they can engage in agriculture, construction, industry, and even energy production. This is most acutely felt in drier parts of the world, wherein Israelis use water at amounts akin to Americans—20 buckets per person, per day. Yet the Zionist entity only permits enough water to enter the occupied West Bank to provide just 4 buckets per person, per day.2
More tragic yet, the Oxfam report from this summer, Water War Crimes, “finds that Israel’s cutting of external water supply, systematic destruction of water facilities and deliberate aid obstruction have reduced the amount of water available in Gaza by 94% to 4.74 liters [a mere 1/4 bucket] a day, per person—just under a third of the recommended minimum in emergencies and less than a single toilet flush.”3
(Linked below is our April 2024 newsletter where we get into the similarities between Puerto Rico and Palestine’s colonial-ass water situations).
The myth of ‘modern water’ already afflicts the US, where, contrary to the belief of equal universal water accessibility; race, ethnicity, and even citizenship status play major roles in determining access to clean water and indoor plumbing.4 Puerto Rico’s water situation is the worst in the country but other hotspots throughout the states have large populations that lack indoor plumbing, including “communities in Alaska, the Four Corners region of the Southwest and along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the upper Midwest, the Northeast—particularly northern Maine and New Hampshire—the Allegheny region in Pennsylvania and Appalachia in West Virginia.”56
(Linked below is our November 2023 newsletter where we get into our communal drinking water and how that works for us).
Polite society doesn’t want us talking about how this single detail of restricted, limited, and undermined water access under occupation—eclipsed by countless other issues faced by Palestinians and other peoples who are colonized, racialized, and marginalized—is enough to dramatically shift the playing field over generations. It benefits polite society to avoid that discussion.
But, maybe asking difficult questions is the key to why we can’t talk to each other?
If we were more open to having the difficult discussions, that come with all the uncomfortable feels, it probably wouldn’t come as such a surprise just how many gallons of clean drinking water folks flush down the toilet, and all the people who just can’t afford to. You would have already talked to your neighbors about it. We have.
“The Occupation of Water.” Amnesty International. November 29, 2017. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/
“Israel using water as weapon of war as Gaza supply plummets by 94%, creating deadly health catastrophe: Oxfam” Oxfam. July 2024. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/israel-using-water-as-weapon-of-war-as-gaza-supply-plummets-by-94-creating-deadly-health-catastrophe-oxfam/
Meehan, Katie, et al. “Exposing the myths of household water insecurity in the global north: A critical review”. WIREs Water: Volume 7, Issue 6. October 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1486
“99.5 Percent of Puerto Rico’s Population Served from Drinking Water Systems that Violated Federal Standards.” Natural Resources Defense Council. May 10, 2017. https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/995-percent-puerto-ricos-population-served-drinking-water-systems-violated-federal
Deitz, Shiloh and Meehan, Katie. “Plumbing Poverty: Mapping Hot Spots of Racial and Geographic Inequality in U.S. Household Water Insecurity”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Volume 109, 2009 - Issue 4. 08 Mar 2019. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24694452.2018.1530587