New report highlights USA's water-supply woes

While USA TODAY last week uncovered the crisis in aging gas lines across the country, the nearby pipes carrying water are also likely to be ancient and in need of repair.

A report, released Monday by the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, found that "diminished water supply is the greatest threat to the economic security and social stability of major portions of this country."

"We all need water and count on it to survive," said Lynn Broaddus, director of the environment program at the foundation. "Our economy would grind to a halt without the reliable, safe, disease-free water that most North Americans have come to take for granted."

"It's the most important resource to our economy and our way of life," Broaddus added.

Overall, the report looks at the challenges and threats associated with the availability, quality and resilience of the USA's freshwater resources, in the face of climate change, failing infrastructure, drought, extreme storms and other critical challenges.

It does not specifically deal with the current drought in California, according to Broaddus, but is more generally concerned with how better to manage the nation's water during both droughts and extreme storm events.

The report goes on to say that "we are losing a significant amount of water due to aging, leaky infrastructure; we are not capturing and using readily available sources; and we are using available water inefficiently or unwisely."

In fact, some of the nation's water infrastructure dates back to the 1800s.

The report took hundreds of experts from diverse groups six years to prepare, Broaddus said, and is the most comprehensive, integrated look at the state of the nation's water.

But the report isn't just a litany of problems, she said: It also offers solutions and recommendations, some of which include:

• Water-supply utilities should dramatically increase the efficiency of their distribution systems;
• They should transition to next-generation wastewater systems;
• Water and wastewater utilities need to continue to implement energy-efficiency measures and other innovations to reduce or eliminate net energy use and work better with the power grid;
• In order to repair and revamp water infrastructure, communities and utilities need to tap into new sources of capital
• Push beyond the regulatory and disciplinary silos of the past and reinvent the infrastructure and utility services that Americans depend on.

"Tackling our water infrastructure challenges presents an opportunity for future economic growth and an overall better quality of life for all of us," Broaddus said.