In “Joliet joins the National Mayor’s Challenge for water conservation,” The Times Weekly outlines how, as part of the Rethink Water Joliet program and a national water conservation challenge, Joliet Mayor O’Dekirk is urging residents to use water more wisely in return for the opportunity to win various cash and material prizes. While water conservation is important, this challenge being directed strictly at households effectively obfuscates the actual culprit behind the depletion of Joliet’s water aquifer and the need to build a $1.4 billion pipeline from Lake Michigan to close the gap. Joliet’s Mayor and Rethink Water Joliet conveniently omits the fact that Amazon’s warehouses alone is currently using over a hundred times more water than a single Joliet household, and that doesn’t include all the other warehouses in the city. Yet, Rethink Water Joliet is exclusively directed at residents, containing pieces of advice that urge residents to turn off the tap while they brush their teeth, replace their toilets, and reduce their showering time. Why is Rethink Water Joliet not aimed at corporate users like Amazon, who made billions in profit over the course of the pandemic and could easily pay for water conservation equipment at their warehousing facilities? Worse yet, there are no signs from the City of Joliet that the warehouses will be on the hook for the pipeline; instead, estimates have been made that residents could see their bills increase by nearly four times. The Joliet Mayor, City Council, and Rethink Water Joliet must stop tricking their constituents into thinking that they’re the cause of Joliet’s water crisis and point the finger at the true source of water waste: the warehousing and logistics industry swallowing up Will County.
Zhenya Polozova (she/her)
Green New Deal Coordinator
Warehouse Workers for Justice
