
EPA: $1 trillion water investment needed for American population growth - reirob
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/epa_1_trillion_needed_for_us_p.html
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thewopr
This article is really thin and potentially misleading. The pictures only
somewhat line up with the text, which leads to the some of the confusion in
these comments. I think this article tries to lump everything together, making
the issues more murky than they need to be.

What's really going on here:

1\. We have aging infrastructure. Old pipes and old plants. This has a fairly
straightforward solution. The municipalities and companies that own this
infrastructure will need to take on financing to fix and upgrade systems. This
is something they can and will do as these things become more of a problem.
But it is pretty classic investment, they own and benefit from this
investment. Some people will complain, but life will go on.

2\. We take clean water for granted and have a number of conflicting economics
that have resulted in water quality degradation, largely in the midwest.
Farmers want to improve yields, so they fertilize more (and till crops which
have higher runoff). This gets into the water, where people with little
economic stake in the crop production and municipalities have to pay for
dealing with the lower quality water. (Note: NY City, as an example, has taken
a very proactive approach to dealing with this by super actively managing the
lake watersheds from where they get their water, they own something like 30%
of the land in some of their key watersheds). This issue isn't as much
population growth as runoff and the modern economics of agriculture.

3\. Arid and dry areas like the southwest have a host of completely different
challenges. There, a lot of cities have undergone rapid population growth,
demanding more water. There is only so much water to go around in those
regions and, on top of it all, they are in one of the worst long-term droughts
on record (there was one worse drought in the middle ages). They are
struggling to keep up with demand. Strong price signals and most importantly,
a re-assessment of the volume of water that goes to agriculture in very dry
areas (at crazy inexpensive rates) could go a long way to improve this
situation. Also, luck of the draw may help if we leave this long-term drought.

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spodek
> " _Most people take the liquid on tap for granted..._ "

Besides not taking water on tap for granted, we could stop taking population
growth for granted. We don't have to grow until we can't afford to overcome
limits.

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kailuowang
Given stories like this, is the American tradition, each family owning a big
house with beautiful lawns, sustainable for population growth?

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hugh4
I think the better question is: is population growth desirable?

It appears to be one of those things which benefits those who own things for a
living at the expense of those who work for a living.

Population growth can't continue forever (not while we're stuck on one planet
anyway) so we need to stabilise somewhere. Why not here?

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douche
Maybe people will move out of the deserts and go where there actually is all
kinds of water. Like most of the old Rust Belt.

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skywhopper
The examples in the article are all about the rust belt...

Most cities' core water systems are 50-100 years old or more. Every time you
read about a water main break, it's a good reminder that the local water
system probably needs some updates.

