On October 11, 2018 the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), and now the bill is on its way to the president's desk. The WRDA is a set of laws that manage and fund the nation’s water resources. Led by the U.S. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the measure provides for needed investments in the nation’s ports, channels, locks, dams and other infrastructure that support the maritime and waterways transportation system and provide flood protection for homes and businesses. WRDA legislation is historically passed every two years. However, in recent years, Congress has only been able to enact three WRDA bills: in 2007, 2014 and 2016.

The average person may be concerned to know the water in their toilet may eventually come out of their tap, but it’s a natural part of the water cycle. In the past, sewage drained into a river or lake, where it would be evaporated by the sun. That moisture would then return to the earth as rain, to be collected by the water distribution company and sent out of the tap again. Additionally, unplanned indirect potable use has existed for a long time. Cities upstream discharge treated sewage into rivers that are used downstream for potable water. In the end, water is water, and communities ready to take advantage of “recycled” water are working to make ratepayers more comfortable with the process of directly treating wastewater and returning it to the water system, rather than discharging it into the environment.

Water scarcity is looming over Cape Town, South Africa. A popular tourist destination and home to miles of eye-catching coastlines, this city is in the midst of a water crisis. Day Zero—the day the taps will officially run dry— steadily approaches.

It’s quite conceivable Cape Town will become the first major metropolis in the world to run out of water. The calculations on when the city will be left without water are updated every week, and the date was originally predicted to be April 29, 2018, but in January, Mayor Patricia De Lille was forced to move that date up. Now, the clocks are ticking down, and consumption habits aren’t changing fast enough to stop the impending outage.