America’s Infrastructure Crisis Gets Real

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America’s Infrastructure Crisis Gets Real

This article is based on Kelly Carnes,  President and CEO of TechVision21, presentation at the Water Innovation meeting in Washington, D.C. acknowledging World Water Day 2016.

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Water Tower, Placentia, California, Source: Placentia Chamber of Commerce

The U.S. is facing serious infrastructure challenges in declining industrial cities.  Although the EPA sets national drinking water standards and provides oversight to ensure those standards are met, the individual states are responsible for ensuring compliance with Lead and Copper Rule, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Bureaucracy at its worst was demonstrated most recently  in Flint, Michigan  where accusations of misapplication of testing standards, ineffective communications, misleading and withheld information, warnings ignored, inaction, foot dragging, and slow paperwork overflowed.   In response, a bipartisan bill in Congress is seeking $220 million to fix and replace lead-contaminated pipes in Flint and other cities. Unfortunately it has been stalled by the objections of a few Senators.

Flint should be a national wake-up call.  Many other cities are reporting problems with their drinking water. Our nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure has received a grade D. Much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life; many pipes and mains are more than 100 years old; 240,000 water main breaks per year.

Recently, 64% of water industry professionals ranked the renewal and replacement of aging water and wastewater infrastructure as the number one critically important water issue we face today– 57% of them ranked financing for capital improvements as the second most critically important issue.

Modernization and financing are critical issues:

Source: Tech Vision 21

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