> presenting water as "a strong organic solvent".
It is really dangerous stuff. It dissolved the Grand Canyon, and similar gullies all over the world. It does dissolve many-many-many things. All life has to find odd materials like cellulose and lignin to stay together on a watery world.
Vonnegut's "Ice Nine" is the answer. It is a polymorph of H2O which freezes at 45.8°C (114.4°F), and will seed-crystalize ordinary Ice Ih into Ice Nine. Over most of the biosphere, Ice Nine is harmless.
But what is MUCH worse: Oxygen. It is a vile poison and highly combustable. While we do manage to live with it, note how close to disaster we are. O2 at full atmospheric pressure turned an Apollo test into a blast furnace. Our engines manage 20% O2; if you picture them at 100% O2 they would not last 4 seconds (lifetime of a fuel dragster piston). The wood on my deck gently turns grey over years; at 100% O2 it would crumble to dust in days, except at 100% O2 trees could not grow as fast as their cellulose would oxidize away.
Ban Oxygen.