Drinking Water

by James Salzman

  The Minoan civilization in Crete had flushing toilets and domestic water as early as 1700 BC, while tunnels directing water from reservoirs and plumbing have been identified at ancient sites in Iran, Palestine, and Greece. Perhaps the most impressive ancient water engineering in the Americas was constructed at Machu Picchu by the Incas, who faced the challenge of moving water from a distant spring to their capital, located at an elevation of more than seven thousand feet. Sloping canals delivered water through agricultural terraces to the emperor’s residence and then, through a series of sixteen fountains, down the mountain slope to the city’s residents.

  The Old Testament is filled with references to springs and wells, their importance clearly evident from the fact that each was given a special name. A desert people, the ancient Jews understood all too well the importance of access to water. As the Book of Jeremiah plaintively recounts, failure to bring water was calamitous.

  The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought: “Judah mourns, and her gates languish; her people lament on the ground, and the cry of Jerusalem goes up. Her nobles send their servants for water; they come to the cisterns; they find no water; they return with their vessels empty; they are ashamed and confounded and cover their heads.”

  When water was scarce, who had access to it, and how was this determined? Jewish law regarding drinking water has been traced as far back as 3000 BC, when Semitic tribes settled in Ur in the land of Mesopotamia. The basic rule was one of common property. As reflected in the later writings of the Talmud: “Rivers and streams forming springs, these belong to every man.” Because water from natural sources was provided by God, sale of these waters would be tantamount to desecration—selling divine gifts.

  Not all sources of water were natural, however. Many important sources of water came from wells, where human labor was necessary to gain access to the groundwater. In these cases, drinking water was managed as a community resource, though not free for the taking. Within each community, Jewish law prioritized access according to use, with high priority given to drinking water, followed by irrigation and grazing. Importantly, however, the highest priority for access was granted to those in need, regardless of whether or not they belonged to the well’s community of owners.

  In practice, this amounted to a Right of Thirst, and this type of rule makes perfect sense. Any traveler in an arid region could foresee a situation where he or she might need water from strangers for survival. A rule that gave water to those in need might very well one day benefit them or their tribal members.

  Islamic water law is quite similar to Jewish water law in both substance and significance. Indeed, the Arabic word for Islamic law, “Sharia,” literally means “the way to water.” Priority was given for drinking, then domestic needs, then agriculture and grazing, favoring needs in the community over outside users. There was also a Right of Thirst. The Koran clearly instructs, “Anyone who gives water to a living creature will be rewarded. … To the man who refuses his surplus water, Allah will say: ‘Today I refuse thee my favor, just as thou refused the surplus of something that thou hadst not made thyself.’” Since water is a gift from God to all people, sharing water was regarded as a holy duty. Access to water for basic survival was a right common to those inside and outside the community.

  Islamic water law was largely adopted into the legal code of the Ottoman Empire, the vast kingdom spanning much of southern Europe and northern Africa. It is still followed by the Bedouin in the Negev and the Berbers in Morocco. As a scholar of the region has described, drinking water is “sacrosanct and neither may be denied anyone for any reason at any time.” While it makes for riveting cinema, the scene at the well in Lawrence of Arabia was likely the invention of the British screenwriter. It certainly does not reflect the Right of Thirst.

  In Australia, the driest inhabited continent, the need for rules over access to drinking water is self-evident. Given the scarcity of water, all uses are carefully managed and Aborigines draw no distinction between water for drinking and other purposes. Most water sources are sacred parts of the landscape, and knowledge of their location is vital to a group’s survival (a truly critical example of intellectual property). Given the variability of rainfall, sharing has played a key role in water management. Researchers have described the system as “always ask.” While water is a closely protected community resource, in practice those requesting water are given permission to drink. As with the Bedouin and Berbers, it is widely understood that those with water today may find themselves needing water in the future. The golden rule applies: give and you shall receive.

  In rural Africa, too, one can find clear parallels to the Right of Thirst. A study of communal lands in Zimbabwe, for example, reported that private wells and boreholes are still made available for communal drinking. The authors concluded that “cutting across all the different tenurial systems is the notion that no one should be denied access to safe drinking water.” This is not to say, however, that it is free for the taking. In times of scarcity, communities may restrict the amount of water gathered, banning, for example, the filling of large drums. Moreover, people must ask permission from the owner prior to using the well. As one person described, “You go to someone you are in good books with.” If someone gathers too much water, uses it for a different purpose than requested, or is unhygienic near the well, then his access rights are limited or even denied.

  Studies of the Bihar, thousands of miles away in the northeast region of India, also reveal a Right of Thirst. Because of the complex social hierarchy, priority of access and management is carefully proscribed along social caste lines. Water is seen as capable of transmitting both physical and metaphysical pollution. Thus upper castes maintain distinct water sources from lower castes to avoid the risk of aqueous contact with “polluted” individuals. The rule of sharing, however, is widely observed, and those in need must be given access to water. At times of water scarcity, even access to an upper caste well is allowed.

  This brief survey suggests three important points. First, while traditional rules governing drinking water management vary from culture to culture, there seems to be a common theme. Whether expressed through the Right of Thirst in Jewish and Islamic law, as sharing norms in India and Africa, or as “always ask” in Australia, access to drinking water in times of need seems to be a basic right in a wide range of societies. Aspects of this right can even be found in the United States today, where public utilities are required to provide service to all customers in their area. Second, these cases provide clear examples of how drinking water can be managed as a physical resource (through rules over how water sources are maintained), a social resource (rules governing which castes and communities may use particular sources), and a cultural resource (with water sharing regarded as a religious duty).

  Third, drinking water in traditional communities has not been viewed primarily as a priced good with allocation determined by market forces. Perhaps it is too important a resource, too connected with divine beneficence and social identity, to be treated as a fungible item for sale or barter. Drinking water clearly is a commercial good in many societies today, though, so how did the transition to commodification occur? There is no better place to look for clues than ancient Rome.

  ROME IS THE FIRST GREAT CITY DEFINED BY ITS MANAGEMENT OF drinking water. The graceful aqueducts that carried clean water to Roman cities were among the most magnificent structures of the ancient world, and some stand intact even today. The water fountains that continue to define the splendor of Rome were important parts of the city’s drinking water provision more than two thousand years ago. Rome is also the first major city that managed drinking water as a priced resource.

  While aqueducts play a critical part in the story of Roman drinking water, that was not their original purpose. Because of Rome’s high water table, there was plentiful water available from local wells and springs. The main reason for construction of the aqueducts was not hygienic but social. Bathhouses were an integral
part of Roman society, and they required large volumes of clean water. Over time, however, as the city’s population grew, the water of the Tiber became increasingly polluted. The ready availability of a reliable source of clean water from the aqueducts spurred demands for its water to be used for drinking, fountains, gardens, and even public toilets.

  The famed Pont du Gard in France, still structurally intact two millennia after its construction, is a prime example of the Roman Empire’s water engineering marvels.

  Rome’s first aqueduct, the Appia, was built in 312 BC, later joined by ten others over the next five centuries. Some spanned more than fifty miles, providing more than thirty million gallons of water daily to the empire’s capital. The skill needed to construct these aqueducts from stone and cement impresses even today. Always maintaining a downward slope for the water to flow, the aqueducts forded rivers, crossed ravines, even ran beneath the earth. Built to last, many of these tributes to engineering acumen still stand across the former empire, witness to the Romans’ mastery of water, stone, and cement.

  The Marcia was the third Roman aqueduct. Built in 144 BC, it was much larger than its predecessors and intended for a special purpose. Brought into the city at a great height, the Marcia’s waters were distributed throughout the city by gravity and primarily used for drinking. Almost half of the Marcia aqueduct’s prized water went to private use, and roughly a quarter went to the city’s public basins, known as lacus.

  The lacus were used by citizens for gathering water for domestic use. Most residents of Rome collected their water in this way, and the lacus provided communal meeting places, much as wells continue to serve as a focus for public life in many rural societies. Excavations in Pompeii have uncovered their spacing about 150 feet from one another throughout the city.

  Notably, the water in the lacus was free for the taking. Not everyone chose to collect their water from public sources, however, and the economics of Roman water supply depended on this demand for private water. Indeed, it is estimated that 40 percent of all the water delivered within Rome went to private buildings, and not all of this was for baths. A special water tax, known as a vectigal, was charged for people who had pipes running from the main system to their houses or baths. Because the aqueduct was free-flowing and the distribution system worked by gravity, the water was always running. Thus the tax was assessed by the size of the supply pipe nozzle rather than the amount consumed. And this was a lot of water. The daily water delivered to a Roman household has been estimated as the equivalent of a modern household’s use over two months.

  The historic postcard above shows a lacus on a street in Pompeii. It is located on the right side of the picture, jutting out from the sidewalk.

  Piped delivery of water to a private residence was a status symbol of wealth, and a common luxury of senators. We know that piped water was highly valued because a major black market arose in what a Roman engineer at the time, Frontinus, called “puncturing”—attaching secret pipes to main lines in order to draw water illicitly into private residences. This became such a problem that a punishment was dedicated specifically to this type of offense. The Roman legal code made puncturing subject to a fine of 100,000 sesterces, roughly $500 of purchasing power today.

  Beyond the engineering challenge, simply building the aqueducts required thousands of laborers, stone masons, surveyors, potters, metal workers (to shape the lead piping), and other skilled craftsmen. A massive public undertaking, construction was funded primarily by the emperor and private donations. Wealthy patrons would enjoy the reflected glory of their beneficence, perhaps not too different from the naming rights we see today for professional sports stadiums, such as Coors Field in Denver or Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. The funds raised by the vectigal, by contrast, were used to cover the costs of system maintenance.

  This water-financing scheme gave Roman drinking water a dual nature. To the wealthy Roman, water in the house—whether for drinking, an ornamental fountain, or domestic uses—effectively was a priced good. The water itself was free, but charging for the service of water delivery made it a commodity. To the average Roman resident, however, water in the city was available by right, as free for the taking as water from the Tiber River.

  Each source relied on different allocation strategies for a scarce resource—use of lacus water was limited by the physical effort of carrying water from the basin to the home; use of water piped into the home was limited by the cost of paying the vectigal. Lacus water was, in modern parlance, a completely subsidized municipal service, but it was perceived as much more than that, for water supply had an implicitly political message.

  Consider that, in the time of Emperor Augustus, the number of lacus increased dramatically, from ninety-one to almost six hundred. And many of these were magnificently decorated, with bronze and marble statues surrounded by columns. These ornate water masterpieces strengthened the tradition of majestic fountains we still associate with Rome. But why were they built?

  Classical scholars suggest these impressive public works were intended, first and foremost, as political statements. Augustus was the first Roman emperor, seizing the reins of power after the struggle following the murder of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. Romans still remembered the more democratic Republic. Augustus, it has been suggested, sought to remind the common people that they received their water from imperial beneficence in the name of their ruler. As historian Matthew Malott has written:

  By totally revamping the water system and making it more conspicuous and lavishly decorated, Augustus, and then Claudius after him, wanted to make the people forget that the older aqueducts survived from a time when the Emperor had no power. He wanted to erase the history of the aqueducts before him and suggest that they were his personal possession, and that although they were a free public service, the people still received their water by his generosity and permission.

  These beautiful fountains and basins provided a clear justification of regime change. The Romans’ right to water was acknowledged, ensured, and enhanced as Aqua Nomine Caesaris—water in the name of Caesar.

  The practice of free drinking water provided in the name of Caesar has endured throughout Italy to modern times. The journal of Rutilius Namatianus, a thirsty traveler in western Italy in 416 AD, contains an outraged passage recounting how he was required to pay for drinking water from a spring near Populonia. A marble wellhead from the ninth century in Rome’s San Marco church carries an inscription cursing anyone who dares to sell the well’s water. Even today, many Italian towns and villages still maintain public water fountains where locals come to fill their jugs to drink at home. Venice, in particular, has one in virtually every piazza.

  The story of Rome, then, provides within the same city fundamentally different conceptions of drinking water—as a public good provided by right through imperial beneficence, on the one hand, and as a private good for domestic consumption, on the other. Yet the two depended upon one another, for it was the treatment of drinking water as a priced good that enabled cross-subsidization to ensure its public nature. This model worked well for more than five centuries, but how did it evolve with the rise of modern industrial cities? New York provides the next stop in our story.

  EVER SINCE PETER MINUIT’S CELEBRATED PURCHASE OF MANHATTAN from the natives for beads and trinkets in 1626, the island has faced challenges of ensuring adequate drinking water. While New York City is obviously surrounded by large rivers, they open on the ocean and are too salty for drinking. The first Europeans to live in Manhattan, the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, collected rainwater in cisterns and shallow wells. Most of the settlement’s water came from a deep spring-fed, freshwater pond known as the Kalch-Hook, covering seventy acres in lower Manhattan (just east of where Broadway now cuts between Chambers and Canal streets).

  The wells in New Amsterdam were private, and none too attractive. As Dr. Benjamin Bullivant described at the time, “[there are] many publique wells enclosed & Covered in ye Streetes … [which are] N
asty & unregarded.” Although there had been plans in 1660 to build a public well, the famed regional governor, Peter Stuyvesant, refused to approve the funding. This proved remarkably shortsighted, however, when British warships sailed up the Hudson in 1664. The Dutch defense was brief and feeble. Besieged in a fort, the Dutch realized to their chagrin that the fort had no wells and therefore no water sources. Following a quick surrender, which kept the town’s commercial prospects intact, Stuyvesant justified the loss to his employers as not a particularly serious matter since the lack of freshwater on the island made it impossible to defend and easy to regain.

  No surprise, then, that one of the first acts of the new British masters, after renaming the city New York, was construction of public wells in the city. Begun in 1667, these would remain a primary source of water for New Yorkers well into the nineteenth century. While the wells were regarded as public works projects, few public monies were actually spent at first. People living on the street where a well had been sited were told to undertake construction on their own. This approach went nowhere, though, with only one brackish well completed. Finally, in 1686, construction of eight wells got underway through a combination of public funding and assessments of families who would be serviced. People refusing to pay the assessment were threatened with forced sales of goods to make up the shortfall. Local residents were charged with ensuring proper maintenance; indeed, some of the wells later became known by the names of these overseers. By the 1700s, this had developed into a common practice in which a local group would petition the authorities to dig a public well or install a pump at a convenient place. In exchange, the costs of construction would be charged to the local residents.