How Will the U.S. Deal With Our Water Crisis?

Jerry Haar

Jackson, Mississippi. Benton Harbor and Flint, Michigan. Baltimore, Maryland. These locales and others serve as stark illustrations of the water crisis facing the nation. Poor access to water, contamination, and decaying infrastructure impinge upon the health, safety and quality of life for those residing in those communities.

?Global warming, climate change and increased natural disasters have triggered water crisis across the globe. To cite but a few examples, Somalia is suffering a decade-long drought while monsoons in India and Bangladesh are becoming increasingly more severe. Deforestation is creating “heat islands” around the surrounding lands, creating hot and arid regions where previously lush green forests occupied the lands.

?The US is no exception to severe changes brought about by the crisis over water. For example, Lake Mead, shared by Nevada and Arizona and Lake Powell, between Utah and Arizona have been deemed “dead pools”. This means that the water levels in Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon dam over these two water bodies respectively is so low that hydro-electric power stations cannot function. Such conditions are causing both water and electricity shortages.

?In that same survey, the US and Canada nevertheless are ranked 26 and 21 respectively, however, according to a 2019 PEW article[1], water infrastructure in North America is aging and will deteriorate at rapid pace. In the US, most of the water infrastructure was built in the 1970s and 1980s [2] and is in dire need of upgrading.

?In fact, the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) has been grading the drinking water ?infrastructure in the US D- or D consistently for over a decade. ASCE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also determined a need for an investment of almost $743 billion to improve the water infrastructure that currently supports $524 billion worth of economic activity and 289,000 jobs[3].

?Looking at the US, the need for investment in the U.S. water system is at an unprecedented level. According McKinsey ?approximately 14-18% of total daily treated potable water is lost through leaks, with some water systems reporting loss rates exceeding 60%.[4] In evaluating financial resources to address this problem, raising rates is not a practical solution since water bills are already too high for many US households. Even before COVID one in five households was paying nearly 5% of their income on water bills.

On the positive side, the need for federal investment in water and wastewater infrastructure is widely recognized, and efforts to address it are gaining momentum. The Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021 includes $55 billion in funding for the restoration and improvement of water and wastewater systems in the United States[5]. Nevertheless, affordability will still be a challenge because most federal funding comes in the form of low-interest loans that may need to be repaid.

Although there is still much be done in the area of water infrastructure improvement in the U.S., significant progress has been made over the last few years such as the executive order titled “Modernizing America's Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure”. The order also establishes certain policy protocols to comply with EPA standards and overall sustainability goals while setting up a plan to increase skilled and professional manpower to improve water resource management using modern technologies.

?While such policies fall within the purview of the federal government, state and local governments in the U.S. are also active in improving water infrastructure and have initiated similar efforts. New York and California are most notable. Corporations such as GAP, Intel, Microsoft, and Merck are also playing their part by making their products more water sustainable and using modern techniques to recycle wastewater. Take the example of Starbucks ?which has set an ambitious goal of conserving or replenishing 50% of their withdrawn water across all operations by 2030.

?Thus, governments and private companies alike have begun understanding their responsibilities and strive to contribute to improving water resource management in every capacity possible.

?Successful water management policies--highly impactful and sustainable—will require both close consultation and collaboration among the private and public sectors. Additionally, as with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it will be necessary for both political parties to come together in an act of bipartisanship to address and successfully overcome the daunting challenges we face and will continue to face surrounding water infrastructure.

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Jerry Haar is a professor of international business at Florida International University and a fellow of both the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Council on Competitiveness.

[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trend/archive/spring-2019/how-development-of-americas-water-infrastructure-has-lurched-through-history

[2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/us-water-infrastructure-making-funding-count

[3] https://www.asce.org/

[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/us-water-infrastructure-making-funding-count

[5] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/914