A major water main break caused flooding on several blocks in Philadelphia in June.
America has a drinking water problem.
The 2.2 million miles of pipes that carry water into homes, businesses and public places are breaking. Many of the roughly 145,000 public water systems’ treatment facilities that make water safe to drink are decaying. And a growing number of the pumps and pipelines that funnel water from reservoirs and rivers are failing.
Every two minutes, there’s a new crack somewhere in the country’s buried water pipe system, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Wastewater treatment plants constructed around the Clean Water Act’s passage in 1972 are at the end of their 20- to 50-year lifespans, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. About 14% of treated water is lost to leaks, with some water systems reporting losses of more than 60%, the EPA says.
The water crisis that erupted in Jackson, Miss., this past week was years in the making, officials say. Aging and inadequate infrastructure had left the city’s water system faltering. Residents have long contended with disruptions in service and frequent boil-water notices, including one that had already been in effect for more than a month due to warnings the water could contain bacteria, viruses or parasites. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves says it could take three or four months, and billions of dollars, to repair the system.
Other water utilities across the U.S. say that they are struggling with the cost of upkeep of their own systems, and sometimes choosing between short-term patches and costlier long-term solutions. Some say their cities could be next to see a water crisis.
Half of the 1,600 miles of water main that distribute water across New Orleans are more than 80 years old, exceeding their expected service life, says Ghassan Korban, executive director of the Sewerage and Water Board. The majority of the board’s financial resources go to emergency repairs rather than replacements, he says. “And a repaired pipe is still an old pipe that could break again the next day,” he adds.
In Santa Cruz, Calif., a single pipe runs from the storage reservoir to the treatment plant, without a backup system, leaving the city vulnerable if the pipe breaks. Many of its water systems need overhauls, says Rosemary Menard, the city’s water director.
On top of aging pipes and pumps, she says, the utility is dealing with big storms, inflation, supply-chain delays and labor shortages. She received a note this summer from the contractor behind a 14-mile, $20 million pipeline replacement project that the price of the pipe material had gone up 12%. The material accounts for about a quarter of the project’s total cost.
“The reality is, we are headed for a train wreck if we don’t figure out a way to break the paradigm we’re in,” Ms. Menard says.
Water-main breaks, boil-water advisories and treatment-plant failures are all becoming more common as the water infrastructure ages. The median age of the oldest part of those systems in 2020 was 113 years, and the average age of pipe is 40 years, according to the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, a lobbying group in Washington, D.C., that represents close to 200 public drinking water utilities.
More than 19,000 people in the Southside neighborhood of Jacksonville, Fla., were told to boil their water this week after an E. coli sample was collected from wells near a treatment plant. Two weeks ago, more than 130,000 people north of Detroit were placed under a multiday advisory following a break in the water main that distributes drinking water to the region. Earlier in August, residents of Newark, N.J., went without running water, geysers erupted in the street and a sinkhole swallowed a car after a 140-year-old, 72-inch pipe snapped.
Unlike bridges, roads and subway lines, clean drinking water isn’t primarily funded by taxes. More than 90% of the average utility’s revenues come directly from constituents’ water bills.
Those bills are soaring along with the costs to fix problems. Homeowners’ water and wastewater maintenance bills across the country are up an average of 46.6% over the past 10 years, according to the Labor Department. This outpaces the average 29.3% increase for all items the Labor Department measures. The bills are on track to keep climbing, say the heads of associations representing the country’s biggest water utilities.
President Biden’s infrastructure bill allots $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water. That’s a fraction of the more than trillion-dollar need identified by the American Water Works Association.
In Jackson, Democratic Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said at a press conference Monday that recent flooding had inundated the city’s main treatment plant, leaving the capital with little to no water—and sometimes raw reservoir water—flowing through the pipes.