Yet another wake-up call about our water supply

 

As if crumbling infrastructure, periodic drought and over-consumption weren't enough, our water supplies are now threatened by state-sponsored hackers.

The Biden administration on Tuesday warned the nation’s governors that drinking water and wastewater utilities in their states are facing “disabling cyberattacks” by hostile foreign nations that are targeting mission-critical plant operations.

. . .

The letter cited two recent hacking threats water utilities have faced from groups backed by hostile foreign countries. One incident occurred when hackers backed by the government of Iran disabled operations gear used in water facilities that still used a publicly known default administrator password ... The second threat was publicly revealed last month by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Officials said that a hacking group backed by the Chinese government and tracked under the name Volt Typhoon was maintaining a foothold inside the networks of multiple critical infrastructure organizations, including those in communications, energy, transportation, and water and wastewater sectors. The advisory said that the hackers were pre-positioning themselves inside IT environments to enable disruption operations across multiple critical infrastructure sectors in the event of a crisis or conflict with the US. The hackers, the officials said, had been present in some of the networks for as long as five years.

There's more at the link.

This is actually a very serious threat.  If it were in their interest to cause massive internal disruption to the United States, to stop this country interfering with their operations elsewhere in the world (say, Iran in the Persian Gulf, or China in Taiwan), shutting down the clean water supply to major US cities would certainly require the US government to focus inward, rather than outward.  Tens of millions of citizens would be in jeopardy, and could not be ignored.  The armed forces would almost certainly have to be deployed to ensure distribution of alternative water supplies, and all sorts of technological resources would be required to repair and rebuild our water infrastructure.

I think Iran is a particular threat in that regard.  It's already got the maritime world over a barrel through its Houthi surrogates in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.  If Israel ends up going to war with Hezbollah as well as Hamas, and strikes Iranian forces deployed in Syria, does anyone imagine Iran won't try to respond in kind?  And wouldn't part of that response be to keep the US preoccupied with its own problems, including perhaps its citizens' water supplies?

Earlier this month I wrote about why we should be storing food.  (For some unknown reason, Google stuck a warning about sensitive content on that post, presumably because one of the sources I quoted referenced possible strings attached to government food supplies.  Don't let that worry you.  Read it anyway - it's important.)  In that article, I mentioned emergency water supplies, too.

Speaking of water storage, don't forget water to go with your food reserves.  Far too many people assume they'll be able to collect water from nearby streams or lakes if necessary.  I've personally run into more than one situation (in the Third World, so far) where local strongmen or gangs camped out next to such bodies of water and "taxed" anyone wanting to draw from them.  That "tax" might be monetary, or confiscation of supplies, or even demanding (sometimes forcibly taking) sex from any woman who can't pay them in other ways.  What makes you think that won't happen here, if things go from bad to worse?  Quite apart from that sort of risk, depending on the emergency, local water sources may be so tainted as to be unusable.  (Remember the train derailment and chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, a year ago?  The water in the area is still badly polluted, and nobody knows when [if?] it'll ever be safe to drink again.  That can, and probably will, happen elsewhere, too.)

(Money saving tip:  Buy bulk packs of food-grade 5-gallon buckets, plus lids for them, to store water.  This 10-pack, for example, works out at only $3.43 per bucket, which is a bargain in anyone's language.  Add low-cost lids for them (I like these for water storage, or the [sadly, much more expensive] Gamma Seal threaded lids for food storage) and a lid remover, and you're good to go.  The combination is much cheaper than buying made-for-purpose water storage containers, and every bit as useful.  Alternatively, if you want to buy water already sealed in a container, shop for the Sams Club 4-gallon jugs.  They're what I mostly use, and are a real bargain.  Keep a few flats of bottled water, too, for handing out to people needing to take water with them while doing other work.)

Again, more at the link.

I very strongly recommend that you pay as much attention to your emergency water supplies as you do to emergency food supplies.  Authorities are unanimous in saying the same thing.

FEMA recommends:

Store at least one gallon per person, per day. Consider storing at least a two-week supply of water for each member of your family. If you are unable to store this quantity, store as much as you can.

The CDC recommends:

• Store at least 1 gallon of water per person per day for 3 days for drinking and sanitation. Try to store a 2-week supply if possible.
• Consider storing more water than this for pregnant women, people who are sick, pets, or if living in a hot climate.

Ready.gov recommends:

Store at least one gallon of water per person per day for several days, for drinking and sanitation ... Take the following into account:

Children, nursing mothers and sick people may need more water.

A medical emergency might require additional water.

If you live in a warm weather climate more water may be necessary. In very hot temperatures, water needs can double.

I agree with all of them, except that I think one gallon per person per day is inadequate.  Remember, water will be needed for drinking, basic personal hygiene (cleaning teeth, washing hands and the essential bits), food preparation and cleaning up afterwards, laundering essential clothing (e.g. underwear), etc.  I reckon two gallons per person per day is more like a practical, realistic minimum to provide for all of those needs.  In hot climates during high summer, even that may be inadequate, particularly if you're physically active.  (Let me tell you, a north Texas summer with daytime temperatures well over 100 degrees will bake you dry!)

For a family of four, at two gallons per person per day, that equates to eight gallons of water per day, or fifty-six gallons per week.  That's just over eleven five-gallon buckets of water every week, or fourteen of those four-gallon Sams Club jugs.  It's inconvenient to store that much:  water is bulky, it's heavy, and it takes up space you'd probably rather use for other things - but without it, you'll be in a world of hurt.  I personally think that a week's supply of water for your household is a minimum requirement.  (I store more than that.)

If the water to your neighborhood was completely cut off for a week or more, how would you cope?  Where would you go to get water, and how would you do that if everyone else in your suburb was doing the same thing?  What containers would you use to get and store the water?  If you don't have them now, how do you expect to get them at short notice when everyone else is looking for them, too?  Water weighs eight pounds per gallon.  Are you fit and strong enough to carry a full five-gallon bucket weighing forty pounds from the water point to your home?  Can you do that over and over again, as often as necessary?  If you're not strong enough, do you have a garden cart or other means of transport for your containers?  Will you be able to stop others trying to steal your container(s) and/or cart(s)?

Friends, get those buckets and lids or other containers now, while you still can, enough of them for at least a week's supply of water for your household.  Fill as many as you can conveniently store in your home, and nest the others together to save space.  At the first sign that there might be a need for them, fill the rest.  Add a WaterBOB bathtub water container to your reserve supplies, and fill it as soon as it seems there may be a need for it;  or, at the very least, keep your bathtub as clean as possible and fill it if an emergency threatens.  (Make sure the plug or stopper doesn't leak!)  Together with your other containers, you'll be well set to survive a week or two without your regular water supplies.

Some may think I'm putting too much emphasis on this.  That depends on your perspective.  I've lived in the Third World, where interruptions in the water supply often (too often!) went hand-in-hand with sometimes severe, life-threatening social disruption and conflict.  It wasn't a talking point there - it was quite literally a survival measure.  If you had to go out to get water, you exposed yourself to real personal risk of harm.  If you had water at home, you didn't have to go out to get it;  so you were safer.  I still think of emergency supplies from that perspective.  It kept me alive back then.  I hope it won't have to again . . . but who knows?

You can live a few days, or even a couple of weeks, without food;  you'll be hungry, but won't suffer permanent harm.  Three days without water and you'll be dead, or nearly so.  Make sure you have reserve water supplies.  That's the bottom line.

Peter

(EDITED TO ADD:  Following reader questions, I've written a brief follow-up post to this one.  Please click over there to read it.)