Without clean, safe, and reliable water and wastewater systems, one-fifth of our US economy would grind to a halt. Yet, in the 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, drinking water and wastewater both received D grades.
On Wednesday, Sept. 10, ASCE will join other water leaders as part of the Value of Water Coalition to share the importance of water with White House and Congressional leaders. If you’re not here in DC, you can still show your support and let Congress know that water should be their priority. Consider joining our Thunderclap on social media – you just need to sign up by next Monday.
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To date, the only aspect of “Infrastructure” that Congress appears to seriously acknowledge is the transportation sector. Admittedly, transportation is important in our society – but no one will die in the next few years if the roads, bridges, highways, rapid transit trains, etc are not improved by spending trillions of US dollars of them. However, human beings cannot live more than 3 days without potable water, and receiving waters will become VERY polluted in about 24 hours without any wastewater treatment…and these are the sources of our drinking water! Yet less than 1% of congressional “Infrastructure” funds are designated for water or wastewater projects. How many “D’s” or “E’s” on the water and wastewater infrastructure arena will be required to make Congress wake up to the DIRE needs in this area? Will they continue to wait till more dramatic failures occur before addressing the problems?!
Transportation is important and there have been people dying on our crumbling highways and collapsing bridges. There was a person in my old neighborhood who died when the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. This person was just one of several that died. So I feel that transportation must get at least 50% of any extra monies that would be appropriated for our civil infrastructure.
Water related infrastructure is equally as important. The most recent water infrastructure failure that flooded UCLA was just one proverbial canary in the coal mine. Typically, civil infrastructure is paid for and maintained by local monies. There are many places that would benefit from Federal monies, but water and sewer pipes are out of sight and out of the minds of most people in America.
The most important thing we must do to effectively communicate the need to fund water related civil infrastructure is to not start throwing doomsday dogma around. Losing sanitary sewers is a legitimate health concern. Not having access to municipal tap water is not such a big deal as water can be supplied from other sources. Convenience or actually the lack thereof is what will cause people pain and suffering.
The pollution of our drinking water sources is also a legitimate concern if we also no longer have waste water treatment. But again, until these “tragedies” are in the national news every single day, few will want to spend money fixing something that, to them, is not broken. People, not just elected representatives do not see crumbling water infrastructure as a dire need to fix because there are many ways to mitigate their inconveniences caused by infrastructure breaks. Sadly, there is very little that will persuade them otherwise. Pushing an alarmist agenda will only serve to make the situation worse. Honesty and facts are the solution to the problem. Speak in terms of dollars and cents as in how many millions to upgrade/repair as compared to how many millions to wait too long and now you have to start all over from scratch.
Water is life and water quality is life’s quality.
Water is precious !
Save it ! !
I completely agree with the urgent need to get working on updating our water infrastructure. I think the reason Congress hasn’t taken it more seriously is that it’s a local issue. It doesn’t directly impact interstate commerce the way highways do. We need to put hold our local and state governments accountable for all the delayed maintenance that got us into this situation. Maybe Congress could help by mandating that local governments take up the issue. Backing the requirement with funding would be helpful, but it irritates me philosophically as not the job of the Federal government. But water is a human right according to the UN, so ignoring creates a humanitarian issue. That might be an extreme position, but it does highlight the actual importance.