Our water infrastructure

In the wake of Super-Stormicane Sandy, much of the East Coast has far too much water on its hands. Yet water may be the most threatened resource for the millions of Americans affected by the storm:

The Scariest Thing About Sandy: Guarding the Water Supply

With Sandy bearing down upon us...[w]hat we all should be worrying about is plumbing. It’s not the water lashing the beaches that matters; it’s the water in your faucet and toilet.... More than email or mass transit or your favorite diner, all of urban life depends on plumbing—defined in practical terms as the effective provision of clean water for drinking and the regular removal of waste to a place nowhere near the source of clean water....

Yet most of today’s survival tips out there have only to do with keeping your food from spoiling or your ice icy.... But the problem is not one of food shortages but, alas, one of excrement. Raw sewage. Shit. In your water supply.

Flooding is the most common way a water supply can be compromised—for example, the Midwest floods of 1993 cut off my Des Moines relatives' water supply for nearly three weeks. But there is another way that the author hints at with his reference to Milwaukee's cryptosporidium outbreak of 1993: inattentiveness to our water infrastructure.

The sad truth is that water is the most taken-for-granted piece of our civilization. You notice the roads you drive on, the lights you switch on, and the Internet you socialize on. When was the last time you noticed a toilet? Have you ever appreciated what an amazing human achievement it is that you can turn on a faucet in your home and get clean water at gallons per penny? Or how lucky you are to live in a time and place where you won't get dysentery or typhus?

By 1960, America built the most amazing and impressive water infrastructure the world has ever seen. We've been mooching off our grandparents' and great-grandparents' investment ever since. Core urban mains are a century or older. Sewer systems designed for 100,000 people support half a million. We can ignore the roads and the electric grid and be inconvenienced, but letting our water infrastructure deteriorate will kill us just like the 100 people killed in Milwaukee two decades ago.

Over the past several months, a number of our Northside neighbors have been complaining about the Madison Water Utility putting an end to decades of neglect. The utility wants to install better meters that allow more dynamic monitoring and pricing, which will drive conservation and make better use of the infrastructure already in place. They want to upgrade or replace aging wells and pipes, like the lovely but outdated WPA project in our neighborhood. And they have the gall to propose increasing rates to pay for all this!

Nobody likes paying more for anything, but the cost of providing the water going into your house and sewer coming out has very little to do with how many gallons come through the pipe, and very much to do with the pipes and wells and treatment plants you're connected to. Rates would have to go up even if MWU wasn't installing smart meters and rebuilding wells, because the more people conserve, the less money the utility has to cover fixed costs.

I asked in July and I ask again: What does Madison want from its water utility? Do we keep hoping that the downtown sinkhole or the disease outbreak won't happen, moving heaven and earth only when politically-connected neighborhoods notice a slight cosmetic discoloration of their water? Or do we suck it up and do what needs to be done?

It should be pretty clear by now how I feel. Where do you stand?