Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
"State of Repair"-Plumbing Problems
Thursday, June 21, 2007
SUSIE GHARIB: It's called the invisible infrastructure. These are the pipes buried underneath cities and towns that deliver clean water and carry away any waste water. But many of those pipe systems are leaking and old and need repair. As we continue our series, "State of Repair," Jeff Yastine looks at the plumbing challenge cities across the country are facing.
JEFF YASTINE, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: For decades, the Pittsburgh region's greatest economic asset was its steel mills. Now, its rivers have that role. The Allegheny and the Monongahela meet to form the Ohio and they're considered critical to the region's bid to attract more white collar employers and develop miles of riverfront housing on the surrounding bluffs. That makes cleaning up incidents like this...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is municipal sewage, coming out from a diversion structure that right now is at capacity.
YASTINE: ...all the more important. But in a region where much of the sewer piping was built 50 to 100 years ago, that cleanup is no easy task. The Herculean job of tracking down where all those pipes go and fixing them, falls to engineers like Tim Prevost, manager of wet weather programs at the regional sewer authority, Alcosan.
TIM PREVOST, MGR. WET WEATHER PROGRAMS, ALCOSAN: Now, where all the steel mills used to be and they've been torn down, development has sprouted up -- community development, housing, research facilities - have been just growing on the riverfront and the riverfront is going to be Pittsburgh's revitalization.
YASTINE: But like everything else involved with infrastructure issues, to fix the problem requires money, lots of it -- up to $3 billion, by some estimates -- to replace or repair the Pittsburgh region's antiquated sewer piping system. And the question is, who will come up with that cash? Ken Kirk, executive director at the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, says it's a question that other cities around the country are asking, as they, too, try to rehabilitate aging sewer networks.
KEN KIRK, EXEC. DIRECTOR, NACWA: If you go to Cleveland, they're talking about $2 to $3 billion. If you go to Chicago, they've already invested about $5 billion over the past 15, 20 years and that's not going to be enough. So, I can go on and on and tell you about individual cases around the country. The costs are high and if you add them up, you end up with a half-trillion-dollar problem and no Federal money to help communities meet their obligations.
YASTINE: Federal grants for communities to improve their wastewater treatment infrastructure has dried to a trickle over recent decades. Yet communities are compelled by the Clean Water Act, signed into law in 1972, to treat and purify wastewater. Many cities have turned to using their bonding authority or hiking user fees to raise money for sewer system improvements. But industry advocates like Kirk say even that isn't enough.
KIRK: Today, the Federal government is basically telling folks that it's their responsibility and they want to get out of the wastewater business. They want to wash their hands of it. That can't happen unless we're willing to face the consequences of reduced levels of clean water. It's just simply not going to happen without the Federal government stepping up to the plate.
YASTINE: One proposal would create a national clean water trust fund. It would use Federal dollars to help cities pay for sewer improvements. But the bill has languished in Congress, leaving wastewater treatment agencies on the hook for financing repairs. In the Pittsburgh area, progress is slow on efforts to fix its aging network of sewer pipes. But water managers like Prevost say the benefits are starting to show.
PREVOST: In the past 10 years, we've been seeing an influx of species - fish, of insects, of birds-- that we haven't see in decades. They're slowly coming back here. And it's not all because they're stocking the rivers. It's because nature is now finding that this is a suitable place to live.
YASTINE: And it's hoped, a place that will attract more jobs and people back to the region. Jeff Yastine, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Pittsburgh.
GHARIB: Tomorrow, our series, "State of Repair," continues with a look at dams. Thousands are at a high risk of failure, but who should pay to fix them?