A Growing Drinking Water Crisis Threatens American Cities and Towns

There are a lot of problems in the water systems across the nation.

The residents of Jackson were without reliable water service for a week. The capital city of 150,000 people has a boil water advisory in place. Some alarming drinking-water-related news has surfaced as summer winds down in the U.S.

In the wake of the drinking-water crisis that hitFlint, Mich., a growing number of similar incidents have received national attention and eroded confidence in neglected drinking-water and wastewater treatment systems that once were considered among the world's most sophisticated and robust. Billions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will flow to states for improvements to local water systems, including the replacement of dangerous lead pipes that run from public water lines to buildings. Money alone can't fix the larger issues afflicting the nation's thousands of aging public and private water and wastewater systems.

Upmanu Lall is a hydroclimatologist at Columbia University and has co-authored and led numerous studies that document the rise of contaminated drinking water in the U.S. Drinking-water systems serving 21 million people in the US were cited for water-quality violations in the last year. Lall and his colleagues have looked at rational and effective ways to build more resilient water and wastewater systems around the world.

Scientific American spoke with Lall about what the future holds for the U.S. water and wastewater systems and what can be done to improve the outlook.

The transcript of the interview has been changed.

The recent drinking water issues in Jackson fit into the larger landscape of the U.S. water distribution system.

Jackson is one of the places where this happens. It may be one of the bigger crises. It's a more frequent one. Unless you are talking about something likeFlint, the smaller water problems should not be reported. What has happened has caught people's attention.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law can address problems such as those afflicting residents of Jackson.

The infrastructure bill proposes to replace a bunch of lead service lines and to spend money to figure out why the chemicals are in the environment. These are positives. I don't want to say bad things about them. They say that when one issue becomes prominent, Congress and other agencies start paying attention to it. The whole infrastructure system with water and wastewater is failing and they need to pay attention to that. It is too large an issue for many leaders and officials to understand. Money is being spent on one issue when in fact it is not addressing the underlying issues.

What should leaders and officials focus on instead when it comes to our water and wastewater systems?

Here’s the challenge: Water and wastewater systems can be divided into the following components. One is storage, such as reservoirs and dams. Then the second is conveyance, which is the pipes that bring the water to you or sewers that take the wastewater back, as well as the associated pumps. And finally, there is the treatment system. So these are the three components that we have to deal with. The median age of U.S. dams is around 60 years. They were designed to last for 50. And the state of maintenance or the condition of around two thirds of the dams in the country is actually unrated and unknown. Regarding conveyance, the number of water-main failures is estimated at around 850 daily in the North America.

There are increasing reports of pathogens in drinking water, which leads to the need for a boil water notice. More and more people are consuming bottled water or buying filters. Reliability of service in each component is a question mark as each component is aging and failing. One needs to think about how they can be upgraded together.

Smaller communities don't have the resources to figure out what to do. We have a systemic risk of failing.

Climate change increases the risk of failure. There is a lower amount of water available, a higher concentration of chemicals in the water, and limited treatment capacity if you have a dry spell. Heavy rains flooded the Highland Lakes area, which supplies water to Austin, Texas. There was a lot of silt in the reservoirs. The city's treatment plant wasn't big enough to deal with the amount of silt. A boil-water advisory was issued for a week in the middle of very wet conditions after the city's water utility asked for water rationing.

What more could the federal government do to make drinking water safer in the U.S.

The situation for water in the U.S. is not the same as it is for energy. Whether they do a good job or not, there are some people tasked with thinking about what should be done and asking for money. Seven or eight different federal agencies have jurisdiction over water. At the state level and at the local level, that structure is duplicated. In the 20th century, the federal government invested in water infrastructure. As a result, we were top of the line. It is time to use new digital technologies to assure performance in order to keep up with the times.

It is a larger issue than that. The energy situation will be compared again. How to replace fossil fuels, how to expand transmission capacities, how to improve the reliability of the system are some of the issues being worked on by the energy policy makers. There is a lot of this done in the private sector. There are no stories on water. The challenge is not monetary. The 21st century architecture for the U.S. water system is being worked on by a group of people. What happens is that we have a piecemeal approach.

We have to think about how we replace them. If we want to design a system for the 21st century, we probably want to have some digital capacity such that when someone turns on a faucet or uses water for showering, drinking or cooking, an instrument on-site should assess the relevant.

70% to 80% of our water systems expenditure in the U.S. is on pumps, pipes and sewer lines. Do you think you will receive treatment in a different area? It is possible that every house or building has a treatment system. You could get feedback from the sensors as to whether or not the treatment worked. It would be possible to take wastewater generated in the area and treat it to our drinking water standards. Rainwater can be captured and treated to meet drinking-water standards. All that becomes doable. We can look at a system that still needs water supplies. You could reduce the amount of water you draw from nature. You would have more reliable service.

Ag is the largest water user and there are options such as shifting which crops are grown where. Restructuring the entire system is something that you start to think about. It's not just a question of freeing money. Getting good, higher-level planning and thinking is more important than putting money behind the plans and innovations.

If we don't change the water storage, conveyance and treatment systems in the US, what will happen?

One of the biggest concerns is the California dry spell. There is a high chance that the agriculture industry will die. That will affect the food supply. The epidemic of water system failures like the one in Jackson will continue to evolve. It isn't going to be a big deal, but there will be something that will unfold slowly until you ask, "Hey, what the hell is going on?"

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