Spotlight Vol. 7, No. 22: A Smarter Stimulus for Water

By Robert Pirani, Director, Environmental Programs 

Infusing money into the nation's infrastructure to stimulate the economy has growing support in Congress and the new Obama administration. It's a terrific idea that can quickly create jobs while addressing many important social, economic and environmental goals. Yet, as the purpose and scope of these investments are negotiated, we must keep in mind that spending more on infrastructure is not enough, we also need to spend smarter - in all areas, and particularly in water-related infrastructure. 

Consider the legacy of Depression-era investments in water resources. The New Deal was the catalyst for a series of large federal dams that forever changed life and landscape in the South and West, and indeed around the nation. Dams in the Tennessee Valley and the Columbia and Colorado basins supplied not just jobs by the thousands but water, energy and transportation systems that continued to fuel westward expansion. 

These infrastructure investments may have been critical to the nation's economic recovery, but they also had significant unintended consequences, as the provision of cheap, abundant water encouraged Americans to settle - and consume massive amounts of water on their lawns and water-intensive crops like cotton - throughout the arid west. In fact, many of the water problems we face today are the direct result of a build-it-first-and-ask-questions-later approach to water systems. 

This time around, we'll have to make sure that our investments in water infrastructure will be of long-term benefit - but there is no doubt that these water investments are urgent and critical. 

Many of our urban areas still rely on water and sewer systems installed in the late 19th and early 20th century. These systems leak - sometimes up to 20% of expensive-to-treat drinking water leaks out before reaching homes and businesses. On the sewer end, combined sewer overflows, which allow untreated sewage to be discharged when it rains; urban stormwater, which has increased significantly as Americans have suburbanized; and agricultural pollution have all caused enough harm to our bays and estuaries. Enough actually to prevent the nation from reaching the goals mandated by the federal Clean Water Act, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars.  

Population growth and migration are another critical water-provision issue. Many fast-growing regions around the country - from New Mexico to the New Jersey Highlands - face water shortages, yet few cities or regions are thinking about water supply as infrastructure that, like transportation and electricity, needs to be able to accommodate this projected growth. Lake Mead, for example, the enormous reservoir of the Colorado River behind the Depression-era Hoover Dam that serves over 30 million Americans, faces a 50% likelihood that it could dry up by 2021.

Finally, water-related biodiversity continues to be under stress, from pressures to divert more water to agriculture and urban uses, from the loss of wetlands and other critical water habitats, and from misguided and obsolete notions of stream engineering. 

All this takes place at a time when climate change is expected to strongly alter the nation's hydrologic cycles, and add to the complication - and therefore the costs - of any water-related planning. Warmer temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will reduce snow packs and increase vapor-transpiration, lowering the capacity of our reservoirs. Drought will occur with greater frequency, stressing water supplies and wildlife. Sea-level rise, higher intensity storms and earlier snow melts will increase risks of flooding both on the coast and inland, at the same time as floodplains have been impaired by irresponsible development and levees and other structures have been demonstrated to fail. 

For all of these reasons and more, water infrastructure should be at the top of Obama's infrastructure stimulus packages. But just how much will it cost to address these challenges in a comprehensive way? Hard to say for sure, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has projected a gap of $224 billion in capital funding to meet both replacement costs and unmet needs for water infrastructure from 2000 to 2019. 

In October the House of Representatives called for  providing  $7.5 billion in loans on water-related infrastructure. Many water advocates are calling for more spending. The National Association of Clean Water Agencies is seeking $10 billion in grants for wastewater infrastructure. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has called for $18.75 billion to help rehabilitate aging water and sewer infrastructure and meet other water quality goals. 

It's great that these organizations are pressing the case for more investment in water infrastructure, but again, we need to make sure to that these investments are sustainable in the long term. 

Traditional, heavily engineered and segregated approaches to water supply, wastewater treatment, storm water management, and flood control are no longer sufficient. Water of all kinds must be managed as an integrated system. An increasingly complex world requires a policy framework that encourages efficient resource use, utilizes pricing and markets, operates in a watershed context, and addresses the implications of land-use decisions. And in many cases, managing water and sewer needs as a comprehensive system can be cheaper and alleviate the need for expensive new facilities. 

Pollution prevention, water conservation, appropriate pricing, improving management effectiveness and efficiency, and green infrastructure like trees and wetlands can often provide the same benefits as traditional approaches at a far lower cost. These approaches often have important secondary benefits, including saving energy used to treat and transport water, reducing the growing costs of flooding, and restoring other ecosystem services. They create local jobs, such as those created by retrofitting commercial buildings and homes with water-efficient fixtures. 

Well-designed green infrastructure also plays a critical role in placemaking and defining community identity, and translates into higher real estate values. Investments in urban clean-water systems stimulate economic development in the right places, our existing cities and suburbs, rather than subsiding growth in green fields far from transit and other services.

Many countries are already actively pursuing strategies that combine state-of-the art engineering technology with sustainable natural approaches. The Dutch government, for instance, has adopted a program called "Room for the River," which promotes both state-of-the-art, engineered flood defenses and natural flood control elements such as wetlands and restored floodplains. 

Australians are capturing and reusing stormwater and grey water for households and buildings. As a result, the average Australian uses about one-fifth the water of a resident of the United States. 

But we don't need to look overseas for good models: New York City itself has been a leader in this movement. Instead of building an expensive new water filtration plant, New York City has invested in better regulation, local water quality improvements and the acquisition of more than 50,000 acres of forests and farms, including conservation easements. The City's toilet rebate program installed 1.3 million low-flush toilets that created capacity at sewage treatment plants and reduced the need to tap the Hudson River for emergency supply.  These "soft" policies  have saved the City billions of dollars in infrastructure costs, while protecting the Catskills and Hudson River and reducing energy demands. 

As Mayor Bloomberg has commented in introducing the Building America's Future initiative: "We under-invest, and we invest badly." Investing in the right kind of water infrastructure is the smart way to create jobs and kick-start America's economy.