US Needs $1 Trillion to Fix 240,000 Water Main Breaks

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:36AM EST · Published Sep 13, 1:29PM EDT

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US Needs $1 Trillion to Fix 240,000 Water Main Breaks — © Thinkstock

Looks at the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known at the Interstate. The primary road arteries across the U.S., nearly 48,000 miles of highway, much of which needs repairs. The cost would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars if done all at once. There is a similar problem beneath the surface–tens upon tens of thousands of water main breaks a year. Far to many for any local, state, or the federal government to pay for

According to Send Word Now:

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the country’s drinking water an overall grade of “D” (or “poor”) on its recent report card. Its dire conclusion? “At the dawn of the 21st century, much of our drinking water infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life. There are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States. Assuming every pipe would need to be replaced, the cost over the coming decades could reach more than $1 trillion, according to the American Water Works Association (AWWA)

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Additionally:

And while disease outbreaks attributable to drinking water are largely unlikely in the here and now, aging pipes in desperate need of replacement suggest a more ominous outlook moving forward. Says former ASCE President Greg DiLoreto, “It comes down to the fact that we have to invest more in the system if we want to continue to have a safe, reliable drinking water system. If we don’t, we’re going to have a lot more Flint, Michigans.”

A number of media reports say that the Flint problem is already widespread. The $1 trillion, against the U.S. GDP of $18 billion, is another matter.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.