Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
$500 Billion Needed to Fix Crumbling U.S. Water Infrastructure
By Sarah Lesher
Special to the Sentinel
Lead in the water has forced metro residents to suddenly think about how the
stuff gets to their taps, even though most of them never did before.And Governor
Robert Ehrlich, Jr.'s proposed "flush tax" is forcing them to think about what
happens to the water afterwards and maybe pay more for it.
The same citizens who rail against potholes and traffic congestion and fallen
power lines give few thoughts to crucial infrastructure underground and its slow
decay.
But the public may have started to think about these issues as the lead scare
and the "flush tax" make daily headlines.
A nationwide survey this month shows that 91 percent of respondents are
concerned that waterways will not be clean for future generations.
And 80 percent believe that if $87 billion can be spent to upgrade Iraqi and
Afghan infrastructure, the same amount of investment should be made at home,
according to Lee Garrigan, director of legislative affairs for the Association
of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA), member of a broad-based coalition of
stakeholders called the Water Infrastructure Network.
There's a $23 billion shortfall per year over 20 years that has to be put into
refurbishing the nation's water and sewage infrastructure, above and beyond what
is spent on operation and maintenance, she said.
That adds up to $460 billion, considerably more than $87 billion. Estimates have
been made by the GAO [General Accounting Office] and the Congressional Budget
Office as well as by WIN, Garrigan said.
The estimated cost of refurbishing has been as high as $800 billion to $1
trillion, according to published reports.
Montgomery County's water and sewer lines date back to the 1920's, but are
younger than the District of Columbia's. And they don't have the problem of
combined sanitary and storm sewers carrying both waste and storm water runoff
from streets that flood sewage treatment plants during heavy rains, forcing the
plants to divert raw sewage to the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
But they still have plenty of problems.
Figures show more water flowing into sewage treatment plants during periods of
heavy rain than dry periods, a symptom of cracks in sewer lines that let water
infiltrate, said David W. Lake, special assistant for water and wastewater
policy, Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection.
And where water can leak in, sewage can leak out.
"There are hundreds and hundreds of miles of sewer pipes laid along the beds of
streams flowing into the Anacostia. Many of these are exposed and leaking sewage
into the streams," said Jim Connolly, executive director, Anacostia Watershed
Society.
Monitoring of fecal coliform [the intestinal bacteria in sewage] has shown that
the problem is worse upstream in the area served by the Washington Suburban
Sanitary Commission (WSSC) than in the downstream area served by the District's
Water and Sewer Authority WASA (WASA).
"We're trying to get WSSC to take responsibility for the input [of fecal
coliform bacteria] that their infrastructure is having on streams. We want them
to identify sources and fix them," Connolly said.
WSSC has drafted a policy to begin looking at problems with sewer systems on a
watershed by watershed basis, but they have started in Rock Creek and Cabin
John, in the areas flowing into the Potomac, rather than the Anacostia basin,
Lake said.
"The Anacostia basin sewer system definitely needs to be focused on. This past
year this issue was raised by the Montgomery County Council," he said.
"I'm not saying WSSC hasn't been responsive, but the issue needs to be
addressed. The Anacostia basin has a very important part of the sewer
infrastructure, but to date it has not been a priority of WSSC," Lake said.
The fundamental problem is money. There haven't been any bond issues in Maryland
in recent years for capital improvements to the system. Operation and
maintenance comes from the rates users pay. Local governments fund improvements
with loans based on the payments anticipated from ratepayers, said Virginia
Kearney, deputy director, Water Management Administration, Maryland Department
of the Environment.
Funds from Congress through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) form a
water quality revolving loan fund. After the State of Maryland contributes 20
percent matching funds, this pot of money is used for loans to local government
entities such as WSSC, to be paid back over 20 years. The repaid principal, plus
interest, goes back out into other loans, she said.
"We're contemplating $70 million [in funding to local governments] this year
somewhere between $50 million and $70 million," Kearney said.
WSSC fully supports efforts currently under way in Congress to increase federal
funding for water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades, said Chuck Brown,
spokesman for WSSC.
As an agency dedicated to public and environmental health, increased federal
funding to replace older water and sewer mains will help us continue to fulfill
our mission of supplying clean, reliable drinking water to our customers and
safely transporting wastewater to treatment plants, he said.
"Over the past several years, we have dramatically increased funding for our
water and sewer reconstruction programs targeting infrastructure that dates back
to the 1920s for replacement and rehabilitation. Additional federal funding will
allow us to further enhance these important programs," Brown said.
The "flush tax" is still a work in progress but, as framed now, it could help
contributed to upgraded treatment for what comes out of those sewers, en route
to the Chesapeake, Kearney said.