Buy bottled water to drink, wash, give to the dog… In far southern Louisiana, salt water rising from a drought-stricken Mississippi has been eating away at people’s daily lives for months. Residents who feel forgotten.
• Also read: The Mississippi, America’s main artery, is desperately lacking water
“Our water started tasting strange in May,” remembers Delta resident Cathy Vodopija.
For the second year in a row, the flow of this iconic river that crosses the United States is historically low, so low that it cannot block the flow of saltwater rising from the sea into the estuary.
And since May, the tap water has been unusable, according to AFP estimates from several residents encountered at the site. “When you wash your clothes, it’s as if they took bleach without having used bleach,” says Cathy Vodopija.
AFP
Byron Marinovich, who runs a restaurant on this fragile strip of land at the end of the delta, had to turn off the ice maker in his kitchen: the salt turned the ice “white, which is very pretty” – but less pleasant for the customer.
At home, he drinks a bottle of water after showering: “You pour it over your head to rinse, otherwise you’ll be sticky all day,” he says.
“Until the salt water rose 100 kilometers higher, they didn’t care what happened to us,” accuses Cathy Vodopija.
On September 20, a type of special dam that authorities had built on the Mississippi River to limit saltwater intrusion was breached. Concern about the water supply in the New Orleans metropolitan area (1.2 million inhabitants) is growing and the issue is being discussed in the media.
AFP
The army engineers responsible for managing the river then decided to build this underwater dam to limit the intrusion of salt water. In addition, fresh water is starting to be fed into the drinking water networks in the south of the delta – a total of around 80,000 cubic meters of collected water was transported upstream by barge on the Mississippi. Desalination plants are connected.
Since then, “the water is better,” admits Byron Marinovich, “but we still can’t do anything with it.” At Black Velvet Oyster Bar & Grill, gumbo, a traditional local specialty, is still made with bottled water.
AFP
Some locals don’t believe the salinity tests conducted by authorities.
On Wednesday, October 18, an excited public meeting expressed distrust of the most important local elected official, who nevertheless came to announce the lifting of restrictions on their tap water. “The worst meeting I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Marinovich says.
Pastor Gaynel Bayham, who has been organizing bottle distribution at her church for months in addition to authorities, says she is “frustrated” by the situation and feels residents are being “let down.”