Breaking Down
Apr 9th, 2008 at 11:28 am by Susie
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink:
NEW YORK - Two hours north of New York City, a mile-long stream and a marsh the size of a football field have mysteriously formed along a country road. They are such a marvel that people come from miles around to drink the crystal-clear water, believing it is bubbling up from a hidden natural spring. The truth is far less romantic: The water is coming from a cracked 70-year-old tunnel hundreds of feet below ground, scientists say.
The tunnel is leaking up to 36 million gallons a day as it carries drinking water from a reservoir to the big city. It is a powerful warning sign of a larger problem around the country: The infrastructure that delivers water to the nation’s cities is badly aging and in need of repairs.
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.
It’s amazing, when looking at the pubic works of the last century, and ask yourself: how could that be built today?
Golden Gate Bridge, NY subways, aqueducts, etc.
It’s not just a matter of inflation (although that is a factor); it’s also a profound change in the society, and the economy; from an industrial economy to a service economy. Which is fine, until you need to “build stuff”.
A “green” economy is much closer to the service model than the industrial model, but there’s still some big issues of long-term sustainability, both in the “green” sense and the “working infrastructure” sense.
Iraq costs us 341 million dollars a day.
That amount of money sure could replace a lot of faulty infrastructure.
We get news of a broken water main somewhere on Oahu at least three times a week, seems like. The sewer rates are rising 100% over the next five years to fund repairs.
what’s interesting is that just a few days earlier, the Times printed an extensive piece on how well the railway infrastructure has held up.
But yeah of course “customers will have to bear the majority of the cost through rate increases, according to the American Water Works Association, an industry group.” That infrastructure is paid for with our taxes, which is what makes it a public utility. That’s preferable to the ugly trend of privatized water.
What Bob said. Couldn’t we just end the occupation six months sooner and use the $300 Billion to lay some pipe? Maybe even shave a full year off the occupation and rebuild some bridges while we’re at it.
What else could we do with a full Freidman Unit in cost savings? [Not to mention the savings on future interest payments, since we've funded the entire occupation on loans from China.]
A couple of years back, the New Yorker had an article that laid out the immense problems looming over the NYC water supply.
I fear that there’s more to come than just this.
How many cities have privatized their water utilities?
I know that Jersey City did, under Bert Schundler, a sleazy and ambitious Republican mayor.
NYC wastes a tremendous amount of water because apartments are not separately metered.
http://prfamerica.org/WastingWater.html