World Water Vision reports that, “there is a water crisis today. But the crisis is not about having too little water to satisfy our needs. It is a crisis of managing water so badly that billions of people – and the environment – suffer badly.”
You may be lucky enough to have immediate access to clean, affordable drinking water whenever you turn on your tap; if so, you shouldn’t take this simple luxury for granted. Our nation’s aging water infrastructure is struggling to keep up. It’s having trouble keeping up with increased demand for water on the supply side, and it’s inadequate in handling sewage and stormwater. So, unless significant investments are made to repair and improve the existing water infrastructure, getting your water might not be quite so easy in the future.
Repairing and replacing traditional water infrastructure alone isn’t enough to meet future water demand, nor is it cost-effective. Cities such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and very recently Chicago, have been investigating more natural ways to ease the stress off of the existing infrastructure.
U.S. Water Infrastructure Receives a ‘D’ Grade.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently gave the U.S. Water Infrastructure a ‘D’ Grade. ASCE’s grading system specifies that a ‘D’ means “the infrastructure is in poor to fair condition and mostly below standard, with many elements approaching the end of their service life. A large portion of the system exhibits significant deterioration. Condition and capacity are of significant concern with strong risk of failure.” There’s some good news though…the D grade is actually an improvement over the D- grade previously reported in 2009.
The ASCE estimates that the U.S. will likely need to spend an extra $1.6 trillion by 2020 to make the needed improvements to our nation’s water infrastructure. As of now, it’s so bad that the U.S. is losing about 1.7 trillion gallons of clean and treated water every year. That’s right; we’re actually paying about $2.6 billion dollars every year for the energy and resources needed to treat the 1.7 trillion gallons of water that never makes it to the tap.
Water scarcity is a real problem and it’s growing.
As of now, there are 1.3 billion people in the world who don’t have access to safe drinking water and seven people die every minute because of it. The U.S. isn’t immune to water shortages, either. For example, the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer is projected to be mostly depleted within 50 years unless current water use is reduced. Even now, vast stretches of farmland are drying up. What were once fertile fields have become dusty wastelands.
A Columbia Water Center study stated that “several major metro areas, including New York City, Washington D.C., and Los Angles, are at high risk for water scarcity, along with the Great Plains agricultural belt extending from North and South Dakota down to North Texas.”
There is also the ongoing challenge of inadequate wastewater and sewage management. It’s shocking to know that sewage overflows pour about 10 billion gallons of raw sewage and wastewater into our nation’s lakes, rivers and streams every year. That’s about 1,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools full.
Our water infrastructure isn’t designed to accommodate natural disasters.
Our water infrastructure can barely keep up as it is, even under the best conditions. A single weather event has the dangerous potential of crippling economies, endangering lives, and causing extensive damages that can take years to recover from physically, financially and emotionally. Hurricane Sandy for example resulted in about 11 billion gallons of sewage overflow making its way through New York and New Jersey, contaminating rivers, lakes, streams, and the ocean between Washington D.C. and Connecticut – enough to cover all of Central Park with a layer of sewage 41 feet high! And it only takes 2/3 of an inch of rain to make Chicago’s sewer system to fail.
Green infrastructure is a necessary tool.
Since water infrastructure is underground it stays out of sight and out of mind for most people. But, it’s clearly a given that there needs to be increased investments in water infrastructure across the nation. Water should be near or at the top of every city’s list of priorities. It is in their best interest after all. The more these necessary investments are delayed, the more difficult and the more expensive they will become.
In addition to making the needed hard infrastructure improvements and investments, additional investments in green infrastructure are absolutely vital to cities to better manage their available water resources and prevent system overflows. Green infrastructure can take threats such as a flash flooding or hurricanes and turn them into assets, mitigating damages while helping replenish dwindling water supplies.
Green infrastructure is a special type of urban planning which uses a networked combination of natural and engineered strategies. It includes permeable surfaces, porous pavements, rain gardens, green roofs, and other site-specific management practices to capture, collect, hold and/or filter stormwater which would otherwise be dumped into a city’s sewer system.
Chicago has been plagued with a lot of problems with its waste water management throughout its history. Even today, whenever Chicago receives 2/3 of an inch of rain or more, the sewage system usually fails. When that happens, untreated sewage mixes in with the stormwater. The overflow usually ends up flooding basements full of raw sewage while the rest makes its way into the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Chicago has recently pledged to invest $50 million dollars of the city’s current water and sewer infrastructure spending on green infrastructure over the next five years to help improve stormwater management. Improvements are scheduled to begin construction this year.
Chicago’s nearby neighbor, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin began looking into green infrastructure in 2002 as a way to reduce the number of combined sewer overflows (CSO). CSO is the discharge from a combined sewer system caused by stormwater runoff or snowmelt. Milwaukee’s green infrastructure plan employs a combination of green roofs, blue roofs, rain barrels/cisterns, permeable pavement, rain gardens, infiltration trenches or vaults, vegetated swales, street trees, planter boxes, downspout disconnection and stream buffers. The city’s goal is to reduce CSOs to zero.
Milwaukee has established itself as a World Water Hub. It is recognized by the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme as a lead innovating city based on its work in the sustainable use and management of water. Due to the efforts of Milwaukee’s Water Council, Milwaukee is now home to the new Global Water Center: a 7-story, 100,000 square-foot building intended to create a shared space for established water-engineering companies and water researchers. In addition to office space, there’s abundant research lab space to be used by university scientists, graduate students and research scientists working for companies. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, the first graduate-level school of its kind in the U.S., will occupy the entire 7th floor. The Consumer Confidence Report regards Milwaukee’s drinking water as the highest quality in the United States.
One of the oldest sewer systems is Philadelphia’s, with the original sewer system dating back to the 19th Century and still operational today. Philadelphia’s Green City, Clean Waters 25 year plan was developed by the Philadelphia Water Department. It is designed to protect and enhance the city’s watersheds using green infrastructure to manage the city’s stormwater. While the city plans to invest over $3 billion in green infrastructure during the 25-year plan time frame, Philadelphia has recognized that the Green City, Clean Waters program is a far more cost-effective approach than merely focusing on traditional infrastructure improvements.
So, whether it’s how you use water at home, at work, or how an entire city manages its water supply – every measure taken to reduce water use, improve water quality and improve wastewater management is a step in the right direction. What is the ocean after all, but a collection of many drops? Better water management through green infrastructure is crucial in prolonging our available water supply. It can help ease the stress placed on existing water infrastructure, and may even help turn potential natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes into water assets instead.
What is your city doing to improve it’s water infrastructure?
The following is an opinion post by David Johnson. David blogs and creates content for several companies on topics related to energy, green building, sustainability and the environment.