TL;DR a story about how we collect water

settler colonialism is the ocean we swim in

This month we’re talking about water, specifically our drinking water and how that works for us. This newsletter is free for everyone, because water fucking should be.

Photo: Alex Matzke. In the neighbor’s farm truck going to fix the water box. The view out the windshield is of a house damaged in hurricane Maria. The house is surrounded by green and a silhouetted palm tree, framed by the windshield.

No one in our area can afford to connect to the municipal water line. Meanwhile our tax dollars fund atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank. Without support for the basics, our area has come up with ingenious ways of making do. But the repercussions of settler colonialism are not a lifestyle choice; don’t call us sustainable.

Getting hooked up to the municipal line doesn’t magically fix the problem either. El acueducto shuts off the water weeks and sometimes months at a time because storms overwhelm treatment plants or blackouts shut down the pumps. Since the electric company was privatized, blackouts and water cut offs have become even more common; with water rationing becoming nearly universal outside of wealthy tourist areas.

In our June newsletter we talked about blackouts and best practices (fermentation!) for keeping food outside the refrigerator; we’re going on three years without a fridge.

Notes from two years without a fridge

Photo: Alex Matzke. Double exposed image looking up at the blue sky through the green and silhouetted forest canopy.

Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rainwater. Read that again.

Our drinking water is rainwater, collected from the mountain, and travels a mile to a spout just outside the neighbor's house. It comes from a cement box in the forest. It was built more than 60 years ago, when our elderly neighbor was just a child, by his father; a guy born around 1900. This box was built replacing an even older one that got too far from the water as the source diminished.

Photo: Alex Matzke. A long white pipe, covered in green moss, crosses the image. Surrounded by plants and other greenery. The light breaks through the forest and hits a spot just below the pipe.

Photo: Alex Matzke. A cement box with two large pieces of metal sheeting is on the left side of the image, it is surrounded by brown bamboo leaves from the large clump out of frame. Bits of misc greenery surround the edges of the image.

The line connecting us to this box has not needed repair in some 20 years, but when the water stopped earlier this month we asked if we could help repair it. We are interested to learn. As some of the few young people, we feel it is important to show up in maintaining community wisdom.

Photo: Alex Matzke. Steven and two neighbors stand outside the farm truck. The truck is facing away from the camera, the main road stretched out ahead of them. Everything around the road is green with plants.

Photo: Alex Matzke. Out in the forest repairing a break in the line.

Puerto Ricans are the least water secure in the nation, based on access and safety. First, our water supplies are diminishing due to a combination of drought, heat, federal budget cuts to local water management, and the fact that industries which only began operating in Puerto Rico for cheaper labor and lower taxes suck up tens of millions of gallons of freshwater daily while polluting what is left¹. Second, of what is left, 99.5% of the population receives tap water in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act, mostly due to lead, industrial chemicals, and arsenic present in the water of millions².

Photo: Alex Matzke. A close-up of the pipe that brings water to the box.

What’s being felt by Coachella Valley residents that are suffering droughts amplified by industry hoarding³ is combined with what Flint and Jackson residents have suffered⁴, poisoned by their own governments, and what the Navajo nation has spent two decades fighting for, access to settler-controlled water supplies⁵.

Puerto Rico and Palestine were both water havens in deserts, supporting millennia of indigenous livelihoods until the West took control. Now, the same blue plastic backup water tanks line Puerto Rican and Palestinian rooftops, planned for the next water cut off. But people in Puerto Rico and Palestine are just canaries in the coal mine of what colonial and capitalist expansion is bringing to the world.

At least we are allowed to collect rainwater.

1. “Puerto Rico's water supply is being depleted, contaminated by manufacturing industry on the island, experts say”. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/puerto-ricos-water-supply-depleted-contaminated-manufacturing-industry/story?id=98482267

2. “THREATS ON TAP: DRINKING WATER VIOLATIONS IN PUERTO RICO.” Natural Resources Defense Council. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/threats-on-tap-drinking-water-puerto-rico-ip.pdf

3. “EPA Issues Emergency Orders to Four Mobile Home Parks in Thermal, Calif., to Ensure Drinking Water is Safe.” EPA. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-issues-emergency-orders-four-mobile-home-parks-thermal-calif-ensure-drinking-water

4. “Jackson Water Crisis.” NAACP. https://naacp.org/campaigns/jackson-water-crisis

5. “The Supreme Court wrestles with questions over the Navajo Nation's water rights.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1164852475/supreme-court-navajo-nation-water-rights