US Water Woes Seen Underserved By Stimulus

US Water Woes Seen Underserved By Stimulus

Interview

Date: 23-Feb-09
Country: US
Author: Carey Gillam

KANSAS CITY - Federal stimulus money to repair crumbling US infrastructure falls far short of what is needed to improve drinking water and waste management systems and address critical water shortages, a leading water industry contractor said on Thursday.

Though more than $6 billion is earmarked for such programs in the new spending bill approved last week by President Barack Obama, many more billions are needed to address aging systems and pursue innovations to deal with water scarcity and pollution, Daniel McCarthy, CEO of the global water business at Kansas City-based Black & Veatch, told Reuters.

Privately held Black & Veatch is ranked among the world's top five builders of water infrastructure projects, with annual water-related revenues of more than $1 billion.

"Six billion is really a drop in the bucket," McCarthy said.

The United States is among many countries wrestling with water shortages due to population growth and a changing climate that has pushed areas of the world into extended droughts.

"What was once a plentiful resource in many areas is no longer," McCarthy said.

On Tuesday, the United States' biggest public utility voted to impose water rationing in Los Angeles for the first time in nearly two decades. San Diego and other California cities are weighing similar measures to cope with severe water shortages.

More than 30 US states are expecting water shortages by 2013, according to a General Accounting Office report.

The stimulus bill offers little fresh money for innovation to address such shortages, pushing funds primarily toward improving conventional systems, McCarthy said.

"If the US wants to regain a strong economy then things that we do ... need to be focused on increasing the United States' competitiveness in the world," he said.

McCarthy said the price tag just for repairing aging water systems is well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has said the United States faces more than $500 billion in funding gaps for needed sewer and drinking water infrastructure projects over 20 years.

Through the stimulus bill, certain state programs will receive about $4 billion for clean water programs and $2 billion for drinking water work. An additional $1.38 billion in loans and grants is being made available for rural water and waste disposal programs, according to the Water Environment Federation.

Efforts to address water shortages have been slowed by the global economic downturn, even as demand grows, McCarthy said.

Among innovations being pursued are desalination projects, converting seawater to drinking water, and "scalping" projects, in which some wastewaters are reclaimed and processed for irrigation water in a "toilet to tap" protocol.

"We've got to keep innovating to keep ahead," he said.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)