You Can’t Have ICE Without Water

There is resistance to some of the proposed locations, even in red states. Many residents don’t want the facilities in their back yards for varying reasons, such as the possibility of protests like those in Minneapolis.

In one location, the lack of water and sewage facilities able to accommodate a converted warehouse has created controversy. As the Guardian reports, when the city manager of the small town of Social Circle, Georgia, was asked by ICE to turn on the water to a one-million-square-foot warehouse, he told them he wasn’t going to do it until they came and talked to him.  

Social Circle officials and residents had been trying to communicate with the federal government about their intentions since December when the Washington Post reported the plans, but it wasn’t until last week that DHS met with local representatives. Even after that meeting, their concerns about water and wastewater were not adequately addressed. When they asked DHS if it would provide the money to upgrade the building, there was no immediate answer, according to the town’s Facebook page.

The town’s sewage system serves about 5,000 people and is already stretched. With a detention facility that is planned to house thousands of people, the town manager warned that they would have to poop on the ground. Social Circle’s concerns about the plans were explained in a page on the town’s webpage.

Worries about strained water resources for planned detention centers have also been raised in Socorro, Texas, Merrimack, New Hampshire, and Berks County, Pennsylvania. DHS claims to have taken water and sewage issues into account as it moves to build 16 “processing centers” and eight “large scale detention facilities.” These claims were made in a memo that the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte, received last week, and was then made public in a release. The memo states that some of the planned facilities will need to have their wastewater systems upgraded.

Besides water issues, residents near planned facilities are also objecting to nearby ICE jails as in Surprise, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, where mothers don’t want their children to see people in shackles. Officials and residents of a least a dozen areas have expressed opposition to the facilities, citing humanitarian concerns about detaining people in buildings meant to be warehouses. Some said that the jails would reduce property tax revenue and hurt local businesses.

Now, the Trump administration wants to allow a Chilean firm to mine for copper and nickel in the area, which conservationists say could contaminate the watershed. Antofagasta, the parent company of the firm, was fined in late January by the Chilean government for $775,000 because of its failure to comply with water management regulations at one of its copper mines.

In January, the House passed a bill to undo a Biden administration decision that protected the wilderness from development. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure during the week of February 23.

Descendants of Roosevelt sent a letter to senators saying the decision ignores sound science that shows the threat to the ecosystem and will put other public lands at risk for similar irresponsible actions. In their letter, which was obtained by the New York Times, they said that promoting mining is the opposite of “America First,” Trump’s claimed basis for many of his policies. The Roosevelt relatives say that the foreign-owned company will use Chinese smelters and then sell the extracted minerals on the open market. 

The “snow drought,” as it’s being called, could make a bad situation worse for Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border and one of the two large reservoirs on the river. It’s already suffering from low water levels. As of February 20, it was at 25 percent of capacity. The latest monthly report by the federal Bureau of Reclamation paints a bleak picture, saying that by September the amount of water flowing into the reservoir could be about 52 percent of average—or even as little as 37 percent.

Those projections could affect whether Glen Canyon Dam, which impounds the reservoir, could function. By December 2026, the report says water levels could drop below 3,490 ft, the minimum pool needed to produce hydropower. By March 2027, the report says, Lake Powell could reach the lowest elevation on record, potentially limiting the dam’s ability to release water.

The grim news comes as the seven states in the Colorado River Basin failed to agree by a February 14 deadline on how to share the system’s water.  The Bureau of Reclamation has proposed five options and could impose its own solution if no deal is reached before October 1, 2026, the start of the 2027 water year, an outcome which would likely trigger lawsuits that could end up before the Supreme Court. 

“Forever chemicals” are compounds made from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS. They’re valued for being water resistant, so they are used in outdoor clothing, food packaging, dental floss—and on ski gear. In 2019, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) announced it would outlaw fluorinated ski waxes—a “fluor ban”—made with PFAS, saying it gave athletes a competitive advantage—and because of mounting evidence about the chemicals' harm to human health and the environment.  

One can see the appeal. The waxes decrease friction, enabling competitors to reach unmatched speeds—but it’s a slippery slope with a cost.  PFAS compounds have been linked to health conditions such as cancer, kidney and liver damage, developmental and reproductive harm, and immune system toxicity. When skiers and snowboarders treat their equipment with fluorinated wax, it sheds tiny particles in the snow, which can then contaminate soils and waterways. Because the chemicals have strong bonds, they can persist in ecosystems for decades, if not longer.

This year’s Winter Olympics are the first since the ban, costing two South Korean cross-country skiers and a Japanese snowboarder their chances to medal after their equipment tested positive for PFAS. All three maintain they followed the rules and did not intentionally use the products. 

PFAS chemicals are so widespread that an estimated 98 percent of the U.S. population has detectable concentrations in their blood, making the compounds an Olympic-sized problem that we’re in a stiff competition to defeat.