DigDeep defends your human right to water. It’s a big job - involving education and awareness work, access projects, field visits, sanitation and hygiene training, meetings, blogging, face booking, party planning and a hulla-valot of coffee. 

And yet we still get this question, almost every day: “What do you mean, my human right to water.”

Well listen up.

First off, you have a human right to water. You have a right to the basic amount of water it takes for you to live with dignity… the water you require to experience your humanity in its fullest, most beautiful form. Your right to water may seem like an obvious thing, but how sensitive are you to it? How often do you think about water and its relationship to your daily life? How much water do you even use a day? 

Sometimes it’s easiest to understand our human rights when they’re not respected - when they’re not enjoyed. DigDeep’s work to bring clean water to people around the world (people just like you) helps each of us better understand this lesson.

But here’s a little newsflash. There are people rights here, in the US, who lack access to clean water. Worse, there are some American communities in danger of having their basic water access degraded or taken away.

These 5 Hotspots are on our Radar. They should be on yours too…

1. Las Cruses, NM - where officials warned residents last month that they can cut off their water service for unpaid traffic violations, citing municipal code;

2. San Joaquin Valley, CA - where nitrate contamination is off the charts, threatening the health of residents;

3. Andrews, TX - where the city has failed to lower arsenic levels in the drinking water… levels that have reached three times the legal limit. The city does not have the money to upgrade water treatment facilities;

4. Dimock, PA - where methane pollution has made local water unsafe to drink (a gas contamination story may also be developing in Illinois);

5. In Lowndes County, AL - where Algood Water Works (a water company) has taken advantage of a new anti-immigration law to threaten water cut offs for residents without a valid drivers license.

Well there you have it. Because you have a right to the water it takes to live in dignity - no matter where you live - it’s simply wrong for anyone to completely cut off your access to this life-giving resource. We’re working to identify and protect the human right to water in the US, and to bring relief to US communities without water access. 

DigDeep believes that US states need water management plans that incorporate human rights, that upgrade infrastructure, and that ensure full domestic water access while preventing contamination and over-extraction.

Join us. After all, its your human right we’re defending!

DigDeep.

Thanks to our friends at Food and Water Watch for this excellent May 9th report on the status of the Human Right to Water in the US. 

Photo credit. 

This year, on World Water Day, we were invited to mingle at a reception hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In this clip, Secretary Clinton discusses water, Mars and international security in a brief speech to her guests. She even notes that water connects everything - which we can see with a “little, tiny bit of digging.” 

Be sure to catch the full, official video and transcript here.  

and DigDeep.

follow us on twitter, so that next time we’re at State HQ you can follow the live tweets: @DigDeepH2O