时代周刊:缺水的日子(1)（在线收听）

Tapped Out

缺水的日子

Millions of Americans Lack Safe Access to Life's Most Essential Ingredient

数百万美国人缺乏生存所需基本资源的保障

By Justin Worland

文/贾斯汀·沃兰

The wheels are still attached to the house trailer that Pamela Rush calls home,

尽管被帕梅拉·拉什称之为家的拖车生活仍在继续，

but the 49-year-old mother of two is trapped.

这位现年49岁，有着两个孩子的妈妈依然感到左右为难。

A lifelong resident of Lowndes County, Alabama,

从未离开过阿拉巴马州朗兹县的她一直靠伤残补助维生，

she lives off disability checks, struggling to pay the bills on a ninth-grade education.

支付孩子九年教育的学费都很吃力。

It's hard to attribute her situation to any one cause—

她的困境很难归结到单个原因上——

she was born in one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states

她出生的县是美国最贫困的州下最贫困的县，

and, like the rest of the county's mostly African-American population,

该县人口以非裔居多，和当地其他非裔一样，

she wrestles with the legacy of slavery and systemized discrimination.

她也没能摆脱奴隶制和制度化歧视等历史遗留问题的阴影。

Just down the road from her home are the sharecroppers' quarters where she was born.

家门口那条路的前方便是她出生的佃农宿舍。

Yet the most immediate source of Rush's troubles is immediate:

尽管如此，困扰拉什的麻烦的直接来源却是近在眼前：

the puddle of sewage that has collected in her backyard, brewing with human feces.

积在她后院，伴随着人类粪便的废水坑。

Whenever the toilet inside is flushed, the waste travels through a 10-ft. pipe straight to her backyard.

屋内的马桶一冲水，废水就会沿着10英尺（约3m）长的管道直通后院。

Thousands of the county's residents are in the same situation.

该县还有成千上万的居民有着同样的困扰。

Local government won't pay to build infrastructure to connect them to proper wastewater-disposal lines,

当地政府不愿花钱投资基建，将各家的废水疏导到专门的废水处理管线，

so they're left to deal with the myriad problems caused by living in sewage that bubbles up into showers and bathtubs.

居民们便陷入了生活在污水里，经常有污水涌入喷头和浴缸带来的各种无奈之下。

A 2017 study of county residents found that 34% of participants suffer from hookworm,

2017年对该县居民展开的一项研究发现，有34%的参与者深受钩虫困扰——

a parasitic infection contracted by walking barefoot on soil contaminated by fecal matter;

这是赤脚行走在被粪便污染的土地上引起的一种寄生虫感染疾病，

among the issues associated with the disease is slow development in children.

这种病会进一步引发许多问题，儿童发育缓慢便是一例。