Water Literacy: A Crucial and Often Understudied Component of Disaster Preparedness

by Jay McGregor

On September 20, 2017, Hurricane María crashed into Puerto Rico’s southeastern coast, its winds exceeding 155 miles per hour and unleashing catastrophic damage across the densely populated island. Within mere hours, Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, which was already fragile from decades of deferred maintenance, collapsed. Soon after, water treatment plants, which depend on electricity, were shut down. Distribution pumps failed. By the morning of the 21st, a staggering 3.4 million American citizens no longer had access to adequate water, food, and shelter. María left families rationing single bottles of water across days, and people got sick from drinking from contaminated water sources. The United States and Donald Trump’s response to the disaster was internationally decried, and solidified public health experts' estimation that colonialism is the ultimate social determinant of health in Puerto Rico.

Amid this devastation, a remarkable phenomenon emerged. Although urban San Juan residents would rely on bottled water deliveries for months, in rural Utuado, many families were able to become self-sufficient. The different experience of the residents of the two towns had nothing to do with infrastructure, wealth, or education. Instead, it came down to something more fundamental: cultural memory. 

The Cistern Culture

Decades before municipal water systems, Puerto Rican families, especially those living in rural and mountainous regions, relied on rainwater cisterns called cisternas. These large concrete tanks, often built beside or beneath homes, collected rainwater from roofs and stored it for household use. Every rural family knew the rhythms of utilizing cisternas. After heavy rain, check the filters. Clean the tank twice a year. Monitor water levels during dry seasons. Understand when water is safe to drink versus when boiling is necessary. 

But between the 1960s and 90s, Puerto Rico quickly modernized, bringing municipal water systems into rural areas. Soon water came from taps instead of cisterns. Although expanding access to tap water is an achievement, the transition caused cisternas to fall into disrepair. Younger generations weren’t taught about the maintenance practices and the cultural knowledge began to fade. 

However, in rural Puerto Rico many families maintained their cisternas even after tap water arrived—partly as a backup system, partly as a tradition, partly because the older generation insisted. Grandmothers still knew which leaves or debris conveyed that the water needed filtering. Grandfathers understood acutely how to ration water during drought. These families maintained what urban Puerto Ricans didn’t: the literacy to harness a backup water source.

Water Literacy in Practice

When taps dried up after María, many people didn’t know what to do except wait for bottled water deliveries. But those who maintained their cisternas didn’t have to wait. They quickly assessed whether the cisterna was intact, how much water they had, how drinkable the water was, and how long it would last.

Families with functioning cisternas would reach out to neighbors, seeing if they had adequate water access. If not, they would share some from their supply. This type of sharing among neighbors is a deeply ingrained cultural tradition in Puerto Rico. Water sharing is an understood responsibility, a holdover from centuries of Puerto Rican communities surviving through pooled resources. 

Learning from María

The lessons from Puerto Rico have profound implications for other regions facing potential catastrophic events. Consider the Pacific Northwest, situated near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which faces the constant threat of a Cascadia earthquake. No one wodners if the earthquake will happen but rather when. In the PNW, municipal water has been so reliable for so long that multiple generations haven’t had to consider where their water comes from or what to do if it stops flowing. We’ve lost water literacy. 

Seattle gets 60 percent of its water from the Cedar River watershed and the remainder from the Tolt River watershed. Both depend on gravity-fed pipelines that run through earthquake-vulnerable areas. Just like the water treatment plants in Puerto Rico, those in Seattle rely on electricity, and an energy blackout, such as following an earthquake, could severly impact these plants, even if they can run briefly on backup generators. 

Estimates suggest that Seattle could be without running water for weeks or months after a major Cascadia earthquake.

Although the Pacific Northwest has less water literacy than exists in rural Puerto Rico, we have many advantages for disaster preparation. This wealthy, highly-educated region has the technical expertise and community organizing infrastructure in place to start rebuilding water literacy. The region has abundant water, both through plentiful annual rainfall and aquifers, springs, and lakes. Water isn’t scarce, but most residents don’t know how to access it outside of municipal taps. 

An easy way to start increasing your water literacy is to try to go for a weekend using only stored or collected water. This practice will force you to practice filtering and purification methods and to calculate your familiy's actual water needs. It’s much better to practice water preparedness plans before a disaster rather than in its aftermath.

Another way to improve water literacy is through public school curriculum. Teaching children from a young age about the water they drink, where it comes from, how it’s purified, and how to plan in a crisis is essential. Community organizations like Bainbridge Prepares are ideally situated to help lead this transformation. They can develop water literacy curricula for community workshops, partner with schools to integrate water preparedness education, create neighborhood water assessment tools, and so much more. 

The Necessary Cultural Shift

Seattle has the opportunity to rebuild its relationship to water before the crisis forces it upon citizens. School curriculum should start incorporating water literacy, frame it as a practice of cultural reclamation, a means of reconnecting with practices that their ancestors held tightly but modernity vaporized.

Students who would go through these programs would likely develop a different relationship towards water, exhibiting more awareness of consumption, curiosity about sources, and conversations with family about preparedness. In these kids’ minds, water would shifted from an invisible utility to a visible, manageable resource. 

Residents, meanwhile, shouldn’t view the Cascadia earthquake as impending doom, but as a survivable challenge, albeit requiring immense preparation. Community organizations and local governments can host workshops to equip people with better water preparedness strategies. A Cascadia earthquake would likely break the infrastructure that many people’s taps depend on. Without building water literacy in the meantime, citizens may feel stranded and hopeless in the event that their tap runs dry. 

Water literacy is cultural memory. And unlike some forms of knowledge that must be built from scratch, a literacy campaign wouldn’t be starting from nothing. The water remains, in the rain, the aquifers, and the springs. People’s ancestors knew how to use it. They just need to remember how.