The city infrastructure is responsible for delivering the water from the reservoirs to the building in the city buildings. The issue that comes with these pipes is that they are underground and the water systems are getting old and becoming prone to becoming faulty. The Environmental Protection Agency is responsible for protecting human health and the environment. Many of the United States major cities have violated the EPA’s safety standards in the last decade.
In many Southwestern states, 2 million people received groundwater that was tainted with arsenic, radium or fluoride from their local water systems. Many of these people have been exposed to these chemicals for years before hundreds of small, low-income communities could afford to filter them out. Some still haven’t cleaned up their water. These contaminations in rural areas from the naturally occurring chemicals, has made Texas, Oklahoma and California the top states for EPA drinking water quality violations during the past decade.
Philip, Agnel, et al. “63 Million Americans Exposed to Unsafe Drinking Water.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 15 Aug. 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/14/63-million-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water/564278001/.63 million Americans exposed to unsafe drinking water
Another issue that faces older towns is the crash of the coal mining industry. The crash has left many South Western Virginians in charge of their own small water. Some of these of pipes date back to the Civil War. Also residents in the mountains of Wyoming and Fayette counties say they are getting too old to maintain water treatment plants and pipes. They also lack the funding to carry out proper treatment on the water, which comes from springs in old coal mines.
Something that may hit a little closer to home for New Yorkers, is that Manhattan had wooden pipes for some of the infrastructure up until 2006. These pipes had many problems from the very begin of their installation, such as the pipes having low pressure, froze in the winter, and the pipes were easily damaged by tree roots. Another factor is that Burr, the man who’s company laid the pipes, decided to only source water from Manhattan, so the supply was polluted from years of industrial, animal, and human runoff.
Schulz, Dana. “How Aaron Burr Gave the City a Faulty System of Wooden Water Mains.” 6sqft, 1 Mar. 2017, https://www.6sqft.com/how-aaron-burr-gave-the-city-a-faulty-system-of-wooden-water-mains/.
The solution for the water crisis is a very expensive issue to solve nationwide which can cost up to 1 trillion dollars. The issue is that all the water pipes are underground, and it is hard to know where there is a problem without having any damage in the pipes. There are also old lead pipes which runs into low income families. Cities can apply for a grant from the EPA which can help cities acquire the funding to help combat the water issues facing the city.
