[Vision2020] Biggest threat to U.S. drinking water? Rust

[Debbie Gray]

>From yahoo.com.

EWWWW.  (And that's my learned opinion living in a
house built in 1934 that's probably swathed in
asbestos and lead and antique pipes)
Debbie 
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Biggest threat to U.S. drinking water? Rust

By Christine Stebbins1 hour, 45 minutes ago

>From an attack by militants to a decline in snow melt
caused by global warming, public fears about the water
supply have heightened in the United States.

So who would have thought the top worry among water
experts turns out to be rusty pipes?

"If you clean up water and then put it into a dirty
pipe, there's not much point," said Timothy Ford, a
microbiologist and water research scientist with
Montana State University.

"I consider the distribution system to be the highest
risk and the greatest problem we are going to be
facing in the future," Ford said.

Towns and cities across the United States spend more
than $50 billion each year cleaning water sourced from
rivers, lakes and underground aquifers.

More than 170,000 public water systems are at work to
keep tap water flowing into American homes and meeting
the standards of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974.

But after the extensive purifying process, water ends
up in your glass after traveling through pipes laid
under city streets 50, 60 or 100 years ago.

Those pipes -- made mostly from iron until plastic was
introduced 30 years ago -- span almost one million
miles in the United States.

As the iron pipes corrode and break, not only does
water escape, but also diseases get in, experts say.

"Investigations conducted in the last five years
suggest that a substantial proportion of waterborne
disease outbreaks, both microbial and chemical, is
attributable to problems within distribution systems,"
the National Research Council said in a study for the
Environmental Protection Agency released in December.

The amount of water lost is a sign the system is
aging, experts say.

The oldest, largest cities in the country --
Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York -- are all
showing signs that their distribution systems are in
need of repair, said Eric Goldstein, a spokesman for
the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading
environmental group.

In New York City, for example, the biggest leak in its
system loses 1 billion gallons of water a month, he
said.

It's that aging infrastructure that poses a rising
health threat to consumers, experts say.

More than 273 million Americans get their water from a
public distribution system. The other 10 percent of
Americans source their water from private, unregulated
wells.

Fears about tap water quality are sparking more
Americans to turn to bottled water or home filtration
systems.

More than 40 percent of American homes use some kind
of water treatment product, according to NSF
International, a not-for-profit public health and
safety group.

EPA rules require that water leaving a city's water
plant be tested for microorganisms like
cryptosporidium and legionella that thrive in degraded
water systems.

EPA also requires tests for a slew of other
contaminants, including lead, copper and arsenic,
which can lead to any number of gastrointestinal or
other illnesses.

But once water has been purged of such impurities,
different ones can enter the water supply as it
courses through miles of old pipe.

"We estimate in the next 20 to 30 years water
utilities will have to invest $250 to $350 billion
just to replace the pipes that are in the ground
today," said Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the
American Water Works Association, the industry's trade
group.

The cost of improving U.S. water infrastructure may
triple the cost of water by 2030, according to the
association.

"We committed 100 years ago to build a reliable,
low-cost, high-quality municipal drinking water
systems. But there are no guarantees that will
continue," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific
Institute, a research group in Oakland, California. 


 
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