A leak from an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) draft report warns of a critical “gap” in the nation’s water infrastructure.
The leak revealed the contents of an EPA 2002 draft report of water systems needs that the agency must present in its periodic report to Congress.
The last assessment, in 1996, indicated at least $139.5 billion in water-related work was eligible for assistance through federal loans to Clean Water State Revolving Funds.
This year’s draft report, however, leaked to the press shortly before a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Environmental and Hazardous Material on April 11, warned of a much greater need: a funding shortfall of more than $650 billion for drinking water and sewer system needs over the next 20 years.
The report, originally scheduled to be released in August after review by the Office of Management and Budget, said more than half of the nation’s sewer pipes (which total 500,000 mi. (80,467 km) of pipeline averaging 33 years old) will be in poor or very poor condition, or even broken by 2016. Some estimates say old, leaking pipes already waste 20 percent of the water carried underneath cities.
An unidentified source provided the draft to The New York Times as Congress was debating large increases of billions of dollars in water system improvements. The Times said this source was “a private group eager to point out that the Bush Administration’s proposed spending to help communities meet pollution limits does not come close to matching its own estimate of the costs of such improvements.”
The Bush Administration’s budget proposal slightly reduces the amounts provided to states in the revolving funds. This proposal would still provide far less funding than bills prepared at the committee level in the House and Senate. These bills, greatly increasing the funding over the next five years, are expected to be brought to the floor of each chamber shortly amid increased scrutiny. They reflect a realization that funding must now expand to meet the infrastructure gap as well as tighter water quality standards (see Plugging The Funding Gap.)
Robin Woods, a spokesperson for the EPA, said the report was an official draft prepared by the EPA. It apparently was prepared for internal peer review within the agency.
“The Hill had asked for the draft before the hearing; we sent it over and somebody released it,” she said.
“The closest we can come to a gap figure is the draft report [$650 billion],” she added. “The numbers will change slightly and we will release our findings in the next couple of weeks.”
Benjamin H. Grumbles, the EPA’s deputy assistant administrator for water, had testified before a House committee on March 13 that there was no single correct number to describe the gap. He had told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on Feb. 26 that “a funding gap will result if the challenge posed by an aging infrastructure network — a significant portion of which is beginning to reach the end of its useful life — is ignored.”
Grumbles said the Bush Administration does not support the funding levels in the Senate bill, because they are not consistent with the priorities of defense and homeland security.
Assessing Needs
Government and industry sources told Construction Equipment Guide (CEG) that existing, often deteriorating, water and wastewater systems are indeed rapidly falling behind the needs of the nation’s growing population and industrial expansion.
“Definitely, water infrastructure is a major problem, which has to be fixed,” said Marcia Lacey, a publications official with the American Water Works Association in Denver, CO. “Most systems in the U.S. have aging pipelines, with a lot of watermain breaks and a lot of repairs. This was our association’s biggest issue before 9/11. Now it’s second only to security against terrorists.”
The emergency represents a massive market for contractors. Water and sewage systems are the second largest public works infrastructure in the United States, only exceeded by the interstate highway system in terms of national investment.
“Contractors all over the country, especially in the Northeast and Midwest, tell us they find wooden pipelines still in use,” Charlie McCrudden, government relations representative for the National Utility Contractors Association (NUCA) in Arlington, VA, told CEG. “Some of the pipes are over 100 years old. It sort of makes you wonder.”
McCrudden said utility contractors are “so busy they can’t keep up” in many areas of the country, especially those where population is exploding.
The Water Infrastructure Network, a coalition of water and public works associations based in Washington, D.C., estimates that municipal governments will have to provide an extra $12 billion over the next 20 years to capital improvements to replace aging pipes and meet EPA guidelines.
“Thirty years after the United States set in motion the Clean Water Act [in 1972] with the ambitious goal of making all of the nations waters both clean and boatable, the bill is coming due,” declared CBSMarketWatch.com. “And it’s a whopper...All across America, the country’s 55,000 municipal water districts and private water companies face an ever-growing backlog of spending demands. By some estimates, it stands at $23 billion a year, or half a trillion dollars over the next two decades. And that’s on top of the $60 billion already being spent each year on such efforts.”
The article revealed that “about half the spending shortfall comes from maintenance needed for drinking water systems, while the other half is needed for wastewater treatment.”
The Internet article was headlined as “America’s $50 Billion Plumbing Bill.” It said that New York City officials, for instance, “are battling the EPA over whether the city’s supply should be filtered at a cost of $1 billion for new plants and infrastructure even as a massive water-carrying tunnel is at risk of collapse.”
Are We Facing A Sewer Crisis?
Many reports have highlighted a growing crisis in sewer pipes. According to U.S. News, “Each year in the United States, sewers back up in basements an estimated 400,000 times, and municipal sanitary sewers overflow on 40,000 occasions, dumping potentially deadly pathogens into the nation’s streets, waterways and beach areas.”
The magazine also cited EPA estimates that pipelines that combine rainwater and sewage discharge 1.2 trillion gallons a year, enough to keep Niagara Falls going for 18 days.
In Atlanta, GA, the magazine said, upgrading the aging sewer system will cost more than $1 billion. “Overflows have been so bad that many manhole covers have popped,” it added.
Increased Funding
Bills in the House and Senate would greatly increase funding for water infrastructure.
The House measure, HR3930, would appropriate $20 billion for wastewater needs over the next five years, beginning with $2 billion in Fiscal 2003 and increasing by $1 billion each year to $6 billion in Fiscal 2007.
The bill has been approved by the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and is awaiting a vote on the House floor.
The Senate bill, S1961, would allot $20 billion for wastewater and $15 billion for drinking water needs over the five years. At presstime, this bill was nearing approval by the Environment and Public Works Committee.
“These bills would greatly increase appropriations for the State Revolving Funds [SRFs],” NUCA’s McCrudden told CEG. “Annual appropriations for the last five years have been much less, averaging $1.35 billion for wastewater SRF’s and $700 million for drinking water SRFs.”
The Bush Administration has proposed $1.2 billion for wastewater needs in Fiscal 2003. It had proposed $700 million last year.
“We are encouraged that the Administration has increased the amount, even though it’s slightly less than actual appropriations last year,” said McCrudden.
How SRFs Work
Funding to clean up lakes, river, aquifers and coastal areas was originally under the 1972 Clean Water Act. Because some aspects of authorization expired in 1994, Congress appropriates, and EPA distributes, money each year to the two SRF “pots,” for water and wastewater. States then lend money to the localities or utilities at low interest, with the money being paid back into the funds. The loan repayments are used to make new loans on a perpetual basis.
EPA estimates that funds invested in the SRFs provide approximately four times the purchasing power over 20 years compared with grants.
The SRF’s mechanism was established in the 1987 Clean Water Act and 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act amendments to the 1972 act.
An estimated $19 billion in federal funds has gone into the Clean Water Act since 1988. These have had a multiplier effect, including a 20 percent match by the states, so that states now have $37.7 billion in assets in their clean water SRFs. The amount lent to the drinking water SRF is less, approximately $5.3 billion, because the drinking water amendment came later and because communities are still using the money, rather than paying it back.
Some proposals would establish a federal trust fund for water needs, similar to that for highway maintenance.
The EPA says that pollution control programs under the Clean Water Act have made two-thirds of the nation’s waters safe for fishing and swimming. The act originally focused on reducing pollution from sources such as industrial plants, and was later extended to safer drinking water. In recent years, it has put a larger emphasis on “non point sources,” such as fertilizer running into streams and rivers from fields.
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