Not a drop to drink

摘要

Zika isn't the only thing hanging over the Rio Olympics. The city's water problems are so intractable that swimmers have been told to keep their mouths closed so that they don't ingest sewage. The situation is an important consequence of the shoddy way we all treat our water. Beyond Rio, evidence of our disregard for the wet stuff is all around, and it is starting to bite. Beijing has sucked so much water out of the ground that the city is sinking by 11 centimetres a year. That's positively glacial compared with parts of California's Central Valley, which are dropping by 5 centimetres per month.