US Water Infrastructure

Drinking water is delivered via one million miles of pipes across the country. Many of those pipes were laid in the early to mid-20^th century with a lifespan of 75 to 100 years. The quality of drinking water in the United States remains high, but legacy and emerging contaminants continue to require close attention. While water consumption is down, there are still an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States, wasting over two trillion gallons of treated drinking water. According to the American Water Works Association, an estimated $1 trillion is necessary to maintain and expand service to meet demands over the next 25 years.

Every day, 6 billion gallons of treated water are lost due to leaking pipes. That’s 2.190 trillion gallons per year.  These leaks create “sink holes” that collapse streets and buildings.

The United States uses 42 billion gallons of water a day to support daily life from cooking and bathing in homes to use in factories and offices across the country. Around 80% of drinking water in the U.S. comes from surface waters such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and oceans, with the remaining 20% from groundwater aquifers. In total, there are approximately 155,000 active public drinking water systems across the country. Most Americans – just under 300 million people – receive their drinking water from one of the nation’s 51,356 community water systems. Of these, just 8,674 systems, or approximately 17%, serve close to 92% of the total population, or approximately 272.6 million people. Small systems that serve the remaining 8% of the population frequently lack both economies of scale and financial, managerial, and technical capacity, which can lead to problems of meeting Safe Drinking Water Act standards.

Drinking water quality in the United States remains the safest in the world. The EPA sets legal limits for over 90 contaminants in drinking water. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) allows states to set and enforce their own drinking water standards as long as the standards meet or exceed EPA’s minimum national standards. Smaller systems that serve under 10,000 people report that a lack of resources and personnel can limit the frequency of testing, monitoring, maintenance, and technical capability in their systems.  With sufficient funding and proper oversight, these risks can be mitigated and water quality can remain safe.

https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_water/

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader