At the city water treatment plant, I learned that someone comes in each and every day of the year to take bacterial plates out of an incubator and verify that there are no pathogens in the drinking water. Then they prepare another set to be read the next day. And the next, and the next. Water treatment plants are a physical instantiation of the idea that politics are the structures we create when we are in a sustained relationship with other people. They’re more than just the technological systems.