Last month, aging water mains broke in cities across the country—among them Tampa, Boston, and San Antonio—spilling millions of gallons. Nearly a million miles of underground pipe carry America’s drinking water, and much of it will need to be replaced—soon. Many of the nation’s cast-iron water mains date back a century or more. Others are newer but made of different materials that wear out faster. Fixing our nation’s water infrastructure will cost $277 billion, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Not replacing it will cost even more. Nationwide, as much water is lost to underground leaks as California uses in a year; in some places, 40% of treated water vanishes underground. Water-main collapses cost far more than scheduled replacements, in both dollars and headaches. An aging pipe’s July rupture in a Washington, D.C., suburb shut down a major intersection, closed several shops, and left 200 customers without water. Utility workers are replacing 27 miles of the pipe this year, but it will take 200 years to solve the problem at that rate.
Older cities are most at risk, though few of the country’s 52,000 water systems will escape the reckoning. “There’s a big bill coming due,” says Greg Kail of the American Water Works Association. “We’re trying to sound the alarm now so that a very big concern doesn’t become a very big crisis.”
— Earl Swift