6 ms·

I'm not sure what a right to water really means. A lot of rural cities don't even provide water. People have wells and you pay for them yourself.

cumshitpiss 11d ago
[dead]
OJFord 11d ago
I suppose it means that has to be available to you somehow, the easiest example perhaps being that if you're renting in such a place, the landlord is obligated to ensure access.
exe34 11d ago
The first paragraph of tfa: > lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water. The "right" here is about other people not contaminating your well for their profit. You don't have that right. They can contaminate your well for their profit and you have to find another source of water at your own cost.
passwordreset 11d ago
I think it's covered under that "right to life" section of the Constitution. Deliberately poisoning people through their water supply seems like a sure-fire way to deny the right to life of your citizens.
- defrost 11d ago
  It hasn't counted when it's "accidental" - eg: pretty much all of the US uranium leach well mining resulted in tainted water in a "yeah we know, but don't care" process. Also radioactive tailings dam collapses and hard rock mining consequences: On Poisoned Ground The largest accidental release of radioactivity in the United States did not occur in 1979 at Three-Mile Island. That very same year a collapsing dam released a flood of radioactive debris into the Navajo Nation. ~ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-ground/ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-... 'We didn't know we were poisoning ourselves': the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, starting in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the lethal radon gas, and they were never told the rocks they were handling – leetso in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – were deadly. ~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-uraminum-mining-poison https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-ur...
- ButlerianJihad 10d ago
  > that "right to life" section of the Constitution The US Constitution? Perhaps you are thinking of the Declaration of Independence? Or the Fifth Amendment, formulating it in the negative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_... I believe it is important for us to consider where rights derive from. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to protect rights that humans already have ("endowed by their Creator") and prevent the government from taking them away, or infringing on them. The law can grant ordinary civil rights, above and beyond intrinsic human rights, but if the Constitution isn't protecting the latter, then there is a problem.
- TFNA 10d ago
  As the other poster mentions, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not from the Constitution but from the Declaration of Independence. As much as it might be part of American civic lore, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, it is a product from two whole legal regimes before the USA's current one was founded.
  - sagarm 10d ago
    The current court has made it clear "civic lore" is fundamental to interpreting the Constitution, though curiously this seems to only apply to certain causes.
latexr 11d ago
Could we please not? In the first sentence of the article: > (…) alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water. Knowingly let residents drink unsafe water. Surely you can see an issue there? Can we please make a collected effort to comment beyond the title? If you don’t know what “a right to safe water” means, then could you please do a web search to try to be minimally informed about the matter before commenting? Took me two seconds to find a UN page. https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-sanitation https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-s... Again, on the first sentence, in bold: > Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights – fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity and prosperity. And on the second paragraph: > Governments must take a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to water and sanitation improvements There’s your right to water. It means that because it’s something fundamental to human life, nations have an (at a minimum moral, often legal) obligation to provide it or protect access to it to everyone under them that lacks it. Just for good measure, here’s the Wikipedia page on Human Rights too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights Again, the first sentence already explains a lot.
- randyrand 10d ago
  It needs more qualifications IMO. "reasonable access" perhaps? I mean how would you handle someone who drives their car into the desert or climbs to the top of a mountain and demands water?
  - latexr 10d ago
    > It needs more qualifications IMO. What it needs is for us to not make up extreme scenarios to excuse not handling the obvious ones, which are extensively covered in the sources I linked you to. Obviously “reasonable” is implied; “unreasonable” is, by definition, absurd. We can only do what’s within our means. That’s the thought behind the “Could we please not?”. Who, exactly, are those the people in your scenarios in the proverbial middle of nowhere going to “demand” water from? That is obviously not the same thing as not caring for the infrastructure under your control or letting people knowingly be contaminated.
pvaldes 11d ago
> I'm not sure what a right to water really means. Right to safe water. It means that the water in your kitchen faucet is expected/guaranteed to be safe to drink. It must not have: noxious bacteria causing diarrhea, or liver parasite eggs, or mud, or mercury/heavy metals, or remains of faeces, or fracking methane, or pesticides, or medicines, or obesogens [1]. It must had been professionally filtered and treated to assure that none of those reach your home. If you pay for water classified as "drinking water", you should not receive grey water, soapy bubbles, oily mud or anything else. This is the standard in all first country nations and I assume that it should be the same in US. [1] And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important.
- JuniperMesos 10d ago
  > And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important. I don't think there's any reason to assume that obesity is caused by any specific chemical found in some but not all drinking water, in such a way that explains differences in obesity rates. If that were the case we probably would've figured that out by now and would be systematically treating drinking water to remove that chemical.
  - pvaldes 10d ago
    > I don't think there's any reason Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration used to think the opposite when they were at charge of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Sadly EPA and FDA are being back-stabbed and slowly murdered by Republicans since 2025 (Yes, like with Voldemort, is important not to be afraid to say it loud). And the death by a thousand cuts had been surgically designed to destroy any capability to prosecute crimes related with the TSCA. So if you live in USA you are alone on this. You better do your homework and learn as fast as you can. Scientific Journals are your friends. There is an incredible increase of unexpected knowledge about digestive regulation published since the 90's. Forget about miraculous fruits and start your journey with the adipokines. Meanwhile the world keeps moving. In Europe, since Jan 2026, water suppliers will be required to comply with a parametric value of 2.5μg/L for BisPhenol-A in drinking water, after scientists discovered than it can leak in the hot-water faucets. People sometimes refill their teapots with hot water before to turn on the kitchen. What is RFK up to lately? Any exciting changes? He found another racoon?
wood_spirit 10d ago
Imagine your well becomes contaminated. That might be natural, or it might be caused by eg fracking. If the latter, do you have any rights and recourse and does it make a difference if the poisoner is state, federal or private? (I’m curious of my own situation as a European with my own well and also not so far from a well documented case against the government because their airbase fire fighting had contaminated groundwater with PFAS.)
bamboozled 10d ago
If the ground water is contaminated with industrial waste ?
deleted 10d ago
[deleted]

cumshitpiss 11d ago

[dead]

OJFord 11d ago

I suppose it means that has to be available to you somehow, the easiest example perhaps being that if you're renting in such a place, the landlord is obligated to ensure access.

exe34 11d ago

The first paragraph of tfa: > lawsuit against the city of Jackson, Mississippi, which alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water. The "right" here is about other people not contaminating your well for their profit. You don't have that right. They can contaminate your well for their profit and you have to find another source of water at your own cost.

passwordreset 11d ago

I think it's covered under that "right to life" section of the Constitution. Deliberately poisoning people through their water supply seems like a sure-fire way to deny the right to life of your citizens.

defrost 11d ago
It hasn't counted when it's "accidental" - eg: pretty much all of the US uranium leach well mining resulted in tainted water in a "yeah we know, but don't care" process. Also radioactive tailings dam collapses and hard rock mining consequences: On Poisoned Ground The largest accidental release of radioactivity in the United States did not occur in 1979 at Three-Mile Island. That very same year a collapsing dam released a flood of radioactive debris into the Navajo Nation. ~ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-ground/ https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/on-poisoned-... 'We didn't know we were poisoning ourselves': the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, starting in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the lethal radon gas, and they were never told the rocks they were handling – leetso in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – were deadly. ~ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-uraminum-mining-poison https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/navajo-dine-ur...
ButlerianJihad 10d ago
> that "right to life" section of the Constitution The US Constitution? Perhaps you are thinking of the Declaration of Independence? Or the Fifth Amendment, formulating it in the negative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_... I believe it is important for us to consider where rights derive from. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to protect rights that humans already have ("endowed by their Creator") and prevent the government from taking them away, or infringing on them. The law can grant ordinary civil rights, above and beyond intrinsic human rights, but if the Constitution isn't protecting the latter, then there is a problem.
TFNA 10d ago
As the other poster mentions, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not from the Constitution but from the Declaration of Independence. As much as it might be part of American civic lore, the Declaration of Independence is not legally binding, it is a product from two whole legal regimes before the USA's current one was founded.
- sagarm 10d ago
  The current court has made it clear "civic lore" is fundamental to interpreting the Constitution, though curiously this seems to only apply to certain causes.

latexr 11d ago

Could we please not? In the first sentence of the article: > (…) alleged the city knowingly let residents drink lead-contaminated water. Knowingly let residents drink unsafe water. Surely you can see an issue there? Can we please make a collected effort to comment beyond the title? If you don’t know what “a right to safe water” means, then could you please do a web search to try to be minimally informed about the matter before commenting? Took me two seconds to find a UN page. https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-sanitation https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/human-rights-water-and-s... Again, on the first sentence, in bold: > Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights – fundamental to everyone’s health, dignity and prosperity. And on the second paragraph: > Governments must take a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to water and sanitation improvements There’s your right to water. It means that because it’s something fundamental to human life, nations have an (at a minimum moral, often legal) obligation to provide it or protect access to it to everyone under them that lacks it. Just for good measure, here’s the Wikipedia page on Human Rights too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights Again, the first sentence already explains a lot.

randyrand 10d ago
It needs more qualifications IMO. "reasonable access" perhaps? I mean how would you handle someone who drives their car into the desert or climbs to the top of a mountain and demands water?
- latexr 10d ago
  > It needs more qualifications IMO. What it needs is for us to not make up extreme scenarios to excuse not handling the obvious ones, which are extensively covered in the sources I linked you to. Obviously “reasonable” is implied; “unreasonable” is, by definition, absurd. We can only do what’s within our means. That’s the thought behind the “Could we please not?”. Who, exactly, are those the people in your scenarios in the proverbial middle of nowhere going to “demand” water from? That is obviously not the same thing as not caring for the infrastructure under your control or letting people knowingly be contaminated.

pvaldes 11d ago

> I'm not sure what a right to water really means. Right to safe water. It means that the water in your kitchen faucet is expected/guaranteed to be safe to drink. It must not have: noxious bacteria causing diarrhea, or liver parasite eggs, or mud, or mercury/heavy metals, or remains of faeces, or fracking methane, or pesticides, or medicines, or obesogens [1]. It must had been professionally filtered and treated to assure that none of those reach your home. If you pay for water classified as "drinking water", you should not receive grey water, soapy bubbles, oily mud or anything else. This is the standard in all first country nations and I assume that it should be the same in US. [1] And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important.

JuniperMesos 10d ago
> And if in your small town everybody is obese, before to blame everybody for eating too much, or being lazy couch potatos, look for chemicals in the drinking water, leading to a broken satiety system, causing people to eat huge amounts of food. This is why the right to have safe drinking water is so important. I don't think there's any reason to assume that obesity is caused by any specific chemical found in some but not all drinking water, in such a way that explains differences in obesity rates. If that were the case we probably would've figured that out by now and would be systematically treating drinking water to remove that chemical.
- pvaldes 10d ago
  > I don't think there's any reason Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration used to think the opposite when they were at charge of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Sadly EPA and FDA are being back-stabbed and slowly murdered by Republicans since 2025 (Yes, like with Voldemort, is important not to be afraid to say it loud). And the death by a thousand cuts had been surgically designed to destroy any capability to prosecute crimes related with the TSCA. So if you live in USA you are alone on this. You better do your homework and learn as fast as you can. Scientific Journals are your friends. There is an incredible increase of unexpected knowledge about digestive regulation published since the 90's. Forget about miraculous fruits and start your journey with the adipokines. Meanwhile the world keeps moving. In Europe, since Jan 2026, water suppliers will be required to comply with a parametric value of 2.5μg/L for BisPhenol-A in drinking water, after scientists discovered than it can leak in the hot-water faucets. People sometimes refill their teapots with hot water before to turn on the kitchen. What is RFK up to lately? Any exciting changes? He found another racoon?

wood_spirit 10d ago

Imagine your well becomes contaminated. That might be natural, or it might be caused by eg fracking. If the latter, do you have any rights and recourse and does it make a difference if the poisoner is state, federal or private? (I’m curious of my own situation as a European with my own well and also not so far from a well documented case against the government because their airbase fire fighting had contaminated groundwater with PFAS.)

bamboozled 10d ago

If the ground water is contaminated with industrial waste ?

deleted 10d ago

[deleted]