Aquapocalypse

In the news recently, stories about the chemical spill in West Virginia, now widely labeled the Aquapocalpse — with the libfix -pocalypse used in denoting a disaster, but not (as you might at first have thought) a flood, but instead a different type of watery disaster.

There’s even a song. From the West Virginia Gazette-Mail on January 22nd, “The ‘Aquapocalypse’ gets one of its first songs”:

Charleston WV. They’re certainly not going to be the only ones, but T.J. King and Kevin Kidd are among the first out of the box with a [country] song about the water crisis. Titled “Aquapocalypse in West Virginia,” the song, with added sound clips, was featured on the “Throw Down a Song Thursday” segment Jan. 16 on radio station Electric 102.7.

From the 4/7/14 New Yorker, in “Chemical Valley” by Evan Osnos, p. 47, some words:

I smell freedom in my shower. I smell freedom in my sink. I will shower in my freedom, but my freedom I won’t drink.

Aquapocalypse has been used before, also to refer to environmental degradation. From a story of 5/1/10:

Aquapocalypse: Greater Boston residents told to boil water as six-year-old aqueduct fails

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