Maybe people in Mississippi, having followed the water system disaster in Jackson more closely than residents of other states did, are more aware of the biggest problem with providing clean water reliably.
But a column on The Washington Post website still provides a good analysis of the situation. Setting aside extreme events like what has been happening in Jackson, assistant editor Robert Gebelhoff says that aging pipes that keep breaking are wasting billions of gallons of water each day.
“Some utilities are losing as much as half or more of their water supply to leaks,” he wrote. “Worse, most states don’t know the scale of the problem and are doing little to find out, threatening their residents’ wallets and their health.”
In 2021, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated that systems in United States were losing 6 billion gallons of water every day. We can do much better than that, but it’s going to take a long time and a lot of money to fix things.
The issue actually starts before any treated water gets sent to customers. The Post wrote that most states don’t require water utilities to track or report how much they are losing.
Although it seems logical the operators of these systems already know. Ideally, you just keep track of how many gallons of clean water you produce, and then compare that to how many gallons gets billed to customers. The difference between the two numbers ought to be pretty close to the amount of water that leaks or other problems are letting out.
The column said Georgia is one of the few states that requires large water utilities to audit their system each year and share the information publicly.
According to this information, Atlanta is losing almost 25% of its water each year — a whopping 9.4 billion gallons. Augusta, Ga. is losing about 20%. Other cities and counties on the list of 10 included with the Post report are losing about 10%, or in some cases a little less.
Another problem is water that got to consumers but didn’t get properly measured because of faulty water meters or outright theft.
But the biggest thing, of course, is that most of the country’s water infrastructure is old. Many are reaching the end of their useful life, or already have exceeded that expiration date.
And now, the bad news: Though Congress allocated $50 billion for water system repairs in the 2022 infrastructure bill, that will pay for only a fraction of the work that needs to be done.
It may be that Jackson’s biggest mistake was ignoring its water system problems, or failing to get help paying for repairs, until it was too late. At least that has emphasized to other water system operators the importance of repairs and replacements.
At the end of the day, municipal water systems and rural water systems — and their customers — should not expect the federal or state government to pay for all the necessary improvements. There’s not enough money to go around.
The customers are going to have to pay a large share of the cost of rebuilding a reliable water system through higher prices.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
