CONCLUSION - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 309

Water and money will be closely entwined in other ways this century: the need for sig-
nificant investments in water infrastructure will force painful choices.
“THE DAWN OF THE REPLACEMENT ERA”
Most of the world's hydro facilities were built in the last century, are aging, and will need
to be upgraded in the not-distant future. But these crucial facilities tend to be built out
of sight, or buried, and are largely ignored even as they malfunction or disintegrate.
In the United States, some 240,000 water pipes burst every year , according to the
EPA. By another estimate, from the USGS, 650 water mains break every day —a rate of
one every two minutes. These leaks result in a loss of 1.7 trillion gallons of water a year,
which is worth $2.6 billion annually and is enough water to supply 68 million people.
Many municipal water pipes are fifty to a hundred years old; some were built at the
time of the Civil War; a handful of pipes in Alaska, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and
Washington are made of wood . Dilapidated sewer systems spew untreated sewage into
waterways, while corroded water mains allow toxins to contaminate drinking supplies
or rupture into floods that wash out roads, strand people, and cause millions of dollars'
worth of damage.
With so many bits of water infrastructure aging across the country, the American
Water Works Association has deemed this “ the dawn of the replacement era . ”
Water infrastructure is expensive, is often large, and can run for miles underground,
making it difficult to maintain or replace—especially for older industrial regions with
weak economies. In 2009, America's water systems cost $1 trillion a year to operate;
the Obama administration's federal stimulus bill provided $6 billion for water projects,
with $2 billion of that earmarked for improvements to drinking-water systems. But that
money is a mere drop in the ocean. The EPA estimates that, just for drinking-water sys-
tems, repairs and upgrades will require a $334 billion investment over the next two dec-
ades, mostly to improve aging pipelines and pumps.
This is an onerous and politically unpalatable cost. But utilities provide essential ser-
vices, and without repairing and replacing old parts, water systems will face a general
collapse. Furthermore, water infrastructure is a good investment. According to the US
Conference of Mayors , every dollar invested in water and sewer improvements has the
potential to increase the long-term gross domestic product by more than $6.