US Water Grid Collapsing

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

While bloggers spend in incessant amount of time politicing this and politicing that, the country is crumbling before our very eyes. The backbone of any nation-state is its infrastructure. While other countries have made huge advancements in their transportation and energy grid, our basic utilities are falling back to pre-industrial standards.

We all know about the bridge collapses, the zeitgeist of last summer. When that was no longer a great political football to kick around, it was largely forgotten. And of course, in true American fashion, nothing was done, except some well-lit photo ops of elected leaders pretending to give a damn.

What is more striking though, is not how our energy policy is archaic, but that our most basic need of all is about to fall into utter disrepair. We can go on forever without our horseless carriages, but we can’t live a few days without water.

Yes, water. Our entire national water grid is cracked, weathered and falling apart. All across the country the nation’s cities have aging delivery systems that are in need of desperate repairs. Most of these pipes and tunnels were built in the 1800s and have long passed even the most generous of life spans.

And we have done nothing, or saved up money, to correct this issue.

Again, we are taking about water. Not some frill or excess of the American Dream. Basic drinking water.

US Water Pipelines Are Breaking

By COLLEEN LONG

http://ap.google.com/article/A…

The Environmental Protection Agency says utilities will need to invest more than $277 billion over the next two decades on repairs and improvements to drinking water systems. Water industry engineers put the figure drastically higher, at about $480 billion.

Water utilities, largely managed by city governments, have never faced improvements of this magnitude before. And customers will have to bear the majority of the cost through rate increases, according to the American Water Works Association, an industry group.

So basically, we are looking at the loot of two years in Iraq to repair our water system in America. And every week or month we wait to fix it, the price tag will just go up and up. There is no band-aide fix for this, it will take an effort matching that of FDR’s CWA or WPA to tackle this issue. And it is an issue of the upmost importance, because again, we are talking about our water supply.

Water, people. It’s what you crave.

Utilities currently spend about $10.4 billion annually on large-scale repairs and improvements on drinking water infrastructure, a figure that has been relatively flat during the past two decades, the EPA said.

Repairs tend to be long and costly, especially since many systems were built nearly a century ago, deep underground, where buildings and major roads now stand.

“We are the only utility where the raw material is free, but the infrastructure is the most expensive,” said Nick DeBenedictis, chief executive of Aqua America, a water company that serves 3 million people in 13 states. “We have to dig up streets in order to do it, but once we make investments it’s good for years.”

So go ahead, talk bowling score this, pundit say what that, just don’t cry sand tears to me when you turn the faucet in a few years and nothing comes out. You have been warned.

And there will be no one to blame for the resource crisis, because it was the American people themselves who 9-11ed their water grid through sheer and utter negligence.

When the grid is dry, we will all know the worth of water.