None of this is true, of course—as Maryland Governor Wes Moore pointed out, the federal government is actually responsible for overseeing the segment of sewer line that failed. And maybe that’s why Trump decided to weigh in.
But this is also an odd issue for Trump to highlight. Although the spill of over 200 gallons of raw sewage is widely being referred to as the largest in the nation’s history, it hasn’t resulted in any boil-water advisories yet—and water quality is not exactly a signature Trump issue anyway. In his first administration, he scrapped the Clean Water Rule, significantly narrowing the scope of federal water protections. This time around, his administration is also attempting to roll back federal protections.
This isn’t the only story recently suggesting that clean water may have political significance that clean air doesn’t. Last week, Charlie Hope-D’Anieri wrote about the wild-card candidacy of a retired water scientist running for secretary of agriculture in Iowa. Chris Jones almost certainly will not win, Hope-D’Anieri acknowledged. But he’s upending long-standing, almost sacred conventions in Iowa politics by challenging the ethanol industry, and arguing "that farmers should be required to make basic, specific adjustments to their practices to prevent the ruination of the state’s water supply." And, perhaps surprisingly, he’s getting some traction, including good turnout at campaign events.
On Tuesday, Inside Climate News reported a new poll that suggests Jones’s early success is not just a freak accident. "Eighty-five percent of voters in Iowa’s first and third U.S. House districts," reports Anika Jane Beamer, "say they would be more likely to vote for an elected official who prioritizes protecting clean water, including cutting industrial agriculture pollution." These are both "vulnerable, narrowly Republican districts," Beamer notes. It’s not impossible that these will be some of the districts that determine whether Democrats flip the House in November.
"It’s very clear that Iowa’s water crisis has reached a boiling point," Food & Water Action political director Sam Bernhardt reportedly said at a press conference announcing the poll results.
Now, you might be inclined to dismiss any single poll along these lines—and it’s worth noting that Food & Water Action did commission this one. But it’s also consistent with prior polling showing that water quality is a strikingly popular issue, which doesn’t seem as vulnerable to the partisan divides seen on other environmental topics. Pew polling from 2023 found that 63 percent of people thought the federal government was doing "too little" to "protect water quality of lakes, rivers and streams," and only 7 percent said it was doing "too much"—making it the top issue when compared to air quality, climate change, protecting animals and their habitats, and protecting natural parks and nature preserves.
Regular polling from the Value of Water Campaign has also found that the number of voters calling "reliable water access" a "very" or "extremely important" issue has been rising for five years straight.
There are some caveats, of course, to how far political concern over water quality can go. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, reached appalling levels for years, and it didn’t seem to make a huge political difference. A lot of people are comfortable ignoring quality issues with other people’s water.
Still, the political relevance of water availability and quality doesn’t seem likely to fade in the near future. It’s a key concern for the MAHA segment of Trump’s supporters. And the water crisis playing out in the American West, as the Colorado River dries up, is only getting worse, affecting both blue states and red. This past weekend, the seven states trying to negotiate a solution to this missed their deadline for a second time.
Water might not be a deciding factor in the midterms this November—there are a lot of issues that might take that prize. But as a political issue, it’s not going away.
