from flickr user <a href= "http://www.flickr.com/photos/babydinosaur/20535746/">BabyDinosaur</a> under creative commons license
Despite the summertime fun that ensues when a burst pipe transforms a neighborhood street into a water park, the problem has gotten a bit out of hand. Last year alone, America experienced 240,000 water main breaks, resulting in the loss of billions of gallons of water. And it’s only going to get worse. In the next 20 years, the EPA predicts a shortfall of more than $500 billion in needed drinking and wastewater infrastructure investments. We’re headed towards a future of sputtering faucets and overflowing sewage plants.
This week, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) proposed an interesting solution: funding the repair of America’s water works with a tax on products that burden it. He’d extract funds from cosmetics, toothpaste, and pharmaceuticals–they’re often difficult to remove in wastewater plants and can harm the environment–and bottled beverages, which have a carbon and water footprint that goes far beyond the liquids that they contain.
The tax might be a tough sell in Congress (see the gas tax), but it begins to lay the groundwork for a more logical approach to regulating water. Scientists now have the tools to calculate the water footprints of a wide range of businesses and products. I explore how crunching those numbers could help solve the water crisis in our current issue.
