Residents of a neighborhood on the southeast side of San Antonio awoke Dec. 12, 2008, to a mess outside their homes. A water main had broken, spilling water over lawns and damaging Christmas decorations. The San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS) spokesperson attributed the break to drought and the age of the pipes.

The San Antonio neighborhood was not the only one in the city to experience a water main break last year. According to SAWS, the water district had 800 more breaks in 2008 than in the previous year, an 80 percent jump. And San Antonio's pipe bursts were not isolated. A Dec. 12 Internet search using the term "water mains breaking" found 3,293 items. Granted, the time span was greater than one day, but the sheer volume of news stories on the subject is a good indication of the size of the problem. For example:

• A water main break in Las Vegas flooded the area near the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, closing a number of streets.
• A water main break in Elyria, Ohio, spewed water onto the Ohio Turnpike, turning one lane into an icy hazard. "This happens all the time in the wintertime," said Elyria's Assistant Safety Service Director Jim Hutchson.

And, in one of the biggest water main breaks in recent history, a 66-inch main broke in Bethesda, Md., making national news just before last Christmas. The break poured 150,000 gallons per minute down a major road, coincidentally named River Road, in a rush that marooned a dozen commuters in their cars until helicopters could lift them to safety. That was only one of 1,709 water main breaks and leaks in Montgomery and Prince George's counties in 2008, the fifth worst year since 1984, according to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC). WSSC's record for water main breaks and leaks in one year is 2,129, set in 2007. "We're plagued by old pipes," explained John White, spokesman for the local water utility.

The anecdotal evidence is supported by several national studies that have concluded that water infrastructure — for both drinking water and wastewater — is badly in need of an infusion of funding to rebuild aging pipes and plants. Unless the nation undertakes a concerted effort in the next two decades, the studies predict more pipe breaks and water shortages and a return to the pollution levels last seen before the enactment of the Clean Water Act of 1972, when rivers were catching fire and swimming holes were closed because of excessive bacteria, according to the Alexandria, Va.-based Water Environment Federation (WEF).

Experts from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Reston, Va.-based American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) predict that the nation faces a calamity if spending is not increased by as much as $450 billion over the next 20 years to maintain and repair drinking water and wastewater networks. They foresee a future of ruptured pipes and sinkholes, tainted drinking water and sewage-saturated rivers and lakes. "Our nation's water infrastructure needs have grown while federal funding has declined," says Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a long-time advocate of investment in transportation and water systems. "We urgently need a new federal commitment to significantly increase investment in our water infrastructure."

Falling further behind

In the most authoritative assessment of the nation's infrastructure needs, the EPA published "The Drinking Water and Clean Water Infrastructure Gap Analysis" in 2002 that estimates the gap between historical funding trends and needs from 2000 to 2019 to be as much as $450 billion. For wastewater, the estimates of investment needs and spending used to calculate the gaps cover all of the approximately 16,000 publicly owned treatment works. For drinking water, the analysis covers the approximately 54,000 community water systems and the 21,400 not-for-profit non-community water systems in the 50 states, U.S. territories and tribal areas.

In its 2002 analysis, the EPA estimated current capital spending at a pace of $13 billion per year for clean water and of $10.4 billion per year for drinking water. The capital payments gap — calculated by subtracting the current spending from the capital payment needs — amounted to as much as $177 billion for clean water and as much as $267 billion for drinking water. Other studies from the Congressional Budget Office, the Water Infrastructure Network and the Denver-based American Water Works Association (AWWA) all have drawn similar conclusions, though the actual estimates vary.

"The bottom line is that we will need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for drinking water and wastewater in the next 20 years," says Tom Curtis, deputy executive director for government affairs for AWWA, the association representing municipal drinking water utilities. "Drinking water has tremendous needs, and wastewater needs are just as great."