Water, Water, Everywhere...

...nor any drop to drink—unless you boil it first, that is.

Yesterday afternoon I was working and, as usual, keeping an eye on Twitter, when I saw someone tweet something about an emergency bulletin from the MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority). It seems that a 6-year-old pipe had burst, leaving 2 million residents—including those in Boston as well as another two dozen surrounding cities and towns—without potable tap water.

I immediately called my elderly neighbor ("Time to switch to whiskey!" came his reply), Andy's parents, and Steph (who was sleeping at a friend's house) to make sure they knew. The official instructions were to boil water for a minute or two before drinking. Which means that people went into full-panic mode and swarmed all the supermarkets to buy bottled water. Because ... why? I have no idea. I did happen to have some bottled water in the house, but I couldn't see the point in running out to buy more when all I needed to do was boil my own tap water. I'm sure there are people (like college students living in dorms) who don't have access to a kitchen for boiling and then chilling their water, but I can't figure out what compelled all the others to drive to nearby communities so they could spend a small fortune on bottled water. Laziness? Fear that they somehow wouldn't do it right? Dunno.

So we started boiling water, filling pitchers, and putting them in the fridge. No biggie. I had to turn on my dishwasher's "sani cycle" for the first time, which the MWRA's FAQ said would do the trick—either that or adding a small amount of bleach to the dishwater. I also had to find the button to turn off the automatic ice maker on my new fridge, then unearthed 3 old ice cube trays and made boiled-water ice cubes. The hardest thing is to remember not to run my toothbrush under the tap after brushing. (My synagogue, which is located just over the line in a "clean water" town, sent out an email tonight inviting the congregation to bring their kids over for pizza followed by teeth brushing.)

The kids got nervous when we instructed them to try to keep their eyes and mouths shut in the shower, but Andy told them what someone (a doctor he was chatting with at Pete's baseball game) said: It's just like swimming in a lake—you try not to actively drink the water, but it's not the end of the world if you swallow a few drops.

The MWRA is hoping to get the water pipe repaired in "days rather than weeks," and I imagine the boiling will get tedious if it does drag on much longer, but all in all it's no big deal. I much prefer this to those rare occasions when they've had to shut off the water completely, even if just for a few hours, or when we've lost electrical power.

Meanwhile, Pete's coach managed to score a whole cooler full of water bottles, which was great because it was in the 80s today and everyone got really hot and thirsty. Pete pitched an outstanding game and also got some nice hits. Who needs clean tap water when your kid's in the zone?

Comments

[James]

Hang in there!

[Margaret]

That would be a pain. It's hard for me to remember not to run my toothbrush under the tap; it's a habit! I had to constantly be aware of what I was doing in Africa because of the water issue. Hope it's resolved soon.

[Stephanie]

Mark came out of the bathroom yesterday and said "I accidentently washed my hands with water!" So many years of washing your hands after going to the bathroom . . . .

Sent Mark to school with water. Keep cool today.

[Janet]

I have to respectfully disagree here. "Heavily-chlorinated pond water" isn't really something I want to drink, boiled or no! Boiling doesn't remove particulates, and who knows what the lead, mecury, etc. levels are. Boiling won't help them, either. We had the supposedly "clean" MWRA water tested a few years ago, and it barely met national safety standards (and I mean barely --hence our filter.) I don't think I want to take a chance on what's in this stuff! It's bottled water for me, I guess. Hopefully this will all be over in a few days anyway, and hopefully no one will have gotten sick, boiled, bottled or otherwise!

[Karen]

Well, it isn't exactly like that -- only about 3% (or possibly less, from what I've read) of the water coming into our homes is "pond water"; the rest is the same water we have always had (and have always filtered), being rerouted via a backup system. In any event, there's no reason you can't pour the boiled water through a filter, as we do.

[Elena]

I think I would have been one of those rushing out to buy bottled water. I don't think I would have trusted the boiling to kill whatever nefarious microbes were in the tap water.