Current risks

Dawn Kristof Champney, WWEMA

Dawn Kristof Champney of WWEMA explains how aging water infrastructure, public health concerns and infrastructure funding legislation make water a matter of national security.

“Trying to find out to what degree our wastewater treatment plants are capable of actually preventing those compounds from being released into our water supplies is an area of heightened interest ”
-Dawn Kristof Champney

When ASCE awarded a grade of D- for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure in its 2009 report card, it was a stark warning that the security of the nation's water infrastructure is at considerable risk. Numerous figures have also been released detailing the plight of our water infrastructure and how much funding is actually required in order to bring it up to standard. Combine this with the effects of the global economic crisis and the outlook appears to be very bleak indeed.

That is until you speak to Dawn Kristof Champney, President of the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA), who has a remarkably optimistic take on the state of affairs. "I think most would agree that our industry is really quite a resilient one when it comes to economic conditions," she says.

"Water is a prerequisite of life and that doesn't change. The needs are so enormous that they cannot be ignored. If you look at the water and wastewater industry compared with a number of other industrial sectors that have seen significant negative growth in the last several years, our industry continues to see growth. It may be very conservative right now, in the 2 to 3 percent range, but it's still growth."

But this optimism by no means negates the fact that the industry is facing some tough challenges right now.  One of the main areas of concern is of course the need to repair and replace existing water infrastructure, much of which has already exceeded its useful life.

The majority of wastewater treatment plants were built in the 1970's, so for the most part, they have already exceeded their useful life. Reinvesting in repairing and replacing existing infrastructure is, and will continue to be, the number one priority.

Leaking water pipes is one example cited by Kristof Champney: "The amount of water we lose in our drinking water pipes is enormous and the cost savings we could make if we could capture that water and not have to find alternative sources of water supply would be a significant return on investment, but we have to be willing to make that investments," she stresses.

With much of the water infrastructure being in such poor condition already, huge doubts are cast over its ability to cope with the tougher conditions we face in the future. This is one of the main challenges that the industry will need to face in the coming years. Climate change will certainly test the resiliency of water infrastructure and as populations become more urbanized existing infrastructure will need to be expanded to cope with these new demands. These issues pose very real and very serious threats to our existing water infrastructure.

As does the issue of the water/energy nexus, explains Kristof Champney: "This is certainly an issue that is being debated throughout the halls of congress and among all facets of the industry at the moment. The quantity of water that we need to provide our energy and the cost of the energy that we require to provide water to our communities is intrinsically linked."  

Public health

These issues are clearly something that has the industry on edge, but there are also concerns that directly regard consumers and these are related to matters of public health.

"We have a whole new area of concerns with regard to emerging compounds. We are just now starting to identify endocrine disrupters in our water supplies and we're trying to understand how much is in there, what the public health risk is, and what the combined risk is when all these compounds come together," says Kristof Champney.

"Trying to find out to what degree our wastewater treatment plants are capable of actually preventing those compounds from being released into our water supplies is an area of heightened interest, and will continue to grow as we further research and analyze what we need to do on the wastewater treatment side to try to keep those compounds from getting into our drinking water supplies."

She also believes that under the current administration tightened standards will continue to be the trend. Stricter regulations will be brought in regarding discharges from industry and on the non-point source. Discharge from agriculture in particular is something that Kristof Champney says will become a huge public policy debate in the next five years or so as there is so much that can be done about non-point source discharge. urban runoff is also one of the biggest contributors to wastewater treatment problems.

On this matter of wastewater treatment and public health Kristof Champney is adamant that the main stumbling block to overcoming these risks is not the lack of technology. "The manufacturers of water and wastewater equipment are very industrious and capable of providing solutions where there is the need, where there is a demand. Technology either exists or will come into play to serve and to treat these new contaminants that we have to deal with," she says.

"It's more a matter of the cost and the demand, the need to actually make these investments to install more advanced treatment technologies. If the demand is there, the technology will be there, the supplier will provide the solutions. But there has to be a very real, defined need, and willingness to invest, to provide, and to make the necessary investments in advanced technologies. That's the big unknown."

Consumer education

Temptation is to believe that this desire to invest that Kristof Champney is referring to is something that must come from the federal level and that it is the government who needs to invest more in the water infrastructure. Whilst this does hold true, the consumer needs to bear the responsibility here too, she says, and must be willing to make the necessary investments.

"I think we all need to do more, both at the federal, state, local, and consumer level, that there is a greater need for all parties to play in trying to bring the needed capital to our industry," she says. "The contribution of the federal government to our industry has waned over the last decade, but it certainly is turning around now and there has been a substantial increase in financial investment in water and wastewater infrastructure in the last two years. Under the Obama administration, I see that continuing.

"But the same time, that's still a drop in the bucket compared to what the needs are, and there's nothing our federal government can do to fill those needs. It's really going to end up having to come from the end user by starting to charge them the true cost of providing the service. That's been the biggest void that we have, and I think that's where we have suffered the most in that we have failed to educate the consumer as to the true cost of providing that service, and we have failed to stand up and face the political challenges of charging the rates that need to be charged to meet our current and future needs. That inevitably has to change," explains Kristof Champney.

"As public consumers and policy makers become more aware of the challenges we're facing and the risks of not making those investments, that is what is going to drive us to actually invest in the future and not just trying to bandaid the present. I suspect in the next decade we are going to see revolutionary changes taking place in our industry now that we have come to realize that we cannot wait any longer," she predicts.

Federal funding

When talking about the financial aid that the industry has received through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Kristof Champney is a little less enthusiastic. She tends to believe that the funding has provided some nominal assistance to communities, but at the same time she is not convinced that the money that the stimulus program has allocated to water and wastewater has not simply supplanted what the communities would have invested on their own had they not received funding.

Something that she feels particularly strongly about is that certain requirements of the ARRA are actually doing more harm than good. "The Buy American rule that accompanied the stimulus funding for our industry has basically crippled our ability to move forward with many projects. The whole premise of the stimulus funds was to provide monies to shovel ready projects that had already been designed. But nobody had designed projects with the idea that they had to comply with a new Buy American requirement," she says.

"All this has achieved is to make shovel ready projects go back to the drawing board to be redesigned in order to comply with the Buy American rule. It had a crippling impact for the first three quarters of last year in getting the money spent. By December 22^nd only 50 percent of the money had gone into projects under construction and we only have until February 17 of this year to spend the rest of that money."

For Kristof Champney it has been a very painful year of trying to educate policy makers as to the damage that they have created. She believes that when this law was passed, policy makers did not fully understand its implications for the municipalities who can now no longer do business with their international trade partners like the UK, Mexico and Canada, which are major trading partners. Negotiations are already underway to get an exemption for Canada, as many US companies have operations there, which means that by complying with this law many US companies are being harmed.

But as far as the future is concerned, Kristof Champney is optimistic that more money will be available for the necessary infrastructure upgrades. "There is legislation currently being considered on Capitol Hill that would substantially increase the money that the federal government will give to the states each year, through the State Revolving Fund program, to assist their infrastructure needs," she says.

However, discussions over the development of a national infrastructure bank and removing the state caps on private activity bonds, therefore providing additional private investment in the industry, could also provide a brighter outlook for the future and are key legislative initiatives that WWEMA is in support of.

"We don't depend on our federal government to have to bail out our communities, it is a local responsibility. We just have to have the political will to step up to the plate, to make our case, to have the facts to defend what we need to get done, and move forward. We can get it done, without question."

 

Water infrastructure in numbers

The nation's water supply system serves some 300 million Americans

The United States uses 408 billion gallons of water each day

The vast majority of the nation's pipes were laid in three phases: in the late 1800s, the 1920s and just after World War II and were designed to last 50-75 years

The American drinking water infrastructure network spans over 700,000 miles, more than four times longer than the National Highway System

72,000 miles of mains and sewer pipes were installed over 80 years ago

Leaking distribution systems account for 9000 Olympic-size swimming pools worth of water being lost daily

240,000 water pipe breaks occur across America each year

The American Water Works Association estimates that water utilities will have to invest $250 billion over the next 30 years to replace aging pipes. The cost of pipes for new developments, security upgrades, advanced treatment methods and other needs may increase this bill to $500 billion

The US Environmental Protection Agency and others estimate that water and wastewater infrastructure repair costs may be as much as $745 billion to $1 trillion over the next 20 years

  

What is WWEMA?

WWEMA is a national non-profit trade association formed in 1908 to represent the interests of companies that manufacture and supply products and technologies used in the water supply and the wastewater treatment industry.

For 101 years WWEMA has been the voice of the water and wastewater equipment industry, at the government level for advocacy efforts and education efforts, and in advancing the interests of the industry and helping its members position themselves to be most profitable in serving that industry.

  

Buy American

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provides significant levels of funding for States to finance high priority infrastructure projects needed to ensure clean water and safe drinking water. The Act also includes "Buy American" provisions in section 1605 that require Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund (CWSRF) and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Fund (DWSRF) assistance recipients of these ARRA funds to use domestic iron, steel and manufactured goods that are produced in the United States.

Exceptions to the Buy American provision are allowed in the following cases:

• where the head of the federal agency concerned determines adherence would be "inconsistent with the public interest",
• where iron/steel/manufactured goods are not produced in the US in sufficient and available quantities, or
• inclusion of US-produced products would increase overall project cost by 25 percent

 

In addition, the ARRA also includes other specific conditions like the one requiring all water infrastructure projects to be under contract or in construction by February 17, 2010. Any States that fail to meet this deadline will have their remaining funding reallocated to those States who have already managed to allocate their financial aid.