Rally for Cleaner Water

Rep. Earl Blumenauer called for a Clean Water Trust Fund at a rally today in support of buttressing America's aging infrastructure.

Organized by Food & Water Watch, the rally highlighted a number of ills facing the country's water and sanitation systems. The average American pipe is 33 years old, while 72,000 miles of pipe are 80 years or older. Holding up today's Washington Post with a story detailing how a failed water main impeded efforts to fight a fire in a city neighborhood, group President Wenonah Hauter announced that it's "time Congress does something about the water infrastructure crisis we're facing."

Hauter touted a report released by her organization today, a few weeks before the 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, that supports Blumenauer's efforts to create a trust fund for the aging water infrastructure. Among the report's findings: The majority of states face current and projected wastewater infrastructure needs exceeding available funding. California faces the worst deficit, with five-year projected needs of $10.5 billion, 210 times its projected 2008 funding. Federal support for state and community sanitation projects through the existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund has declined from a high of roughly $2 billion in 1991 to slightly more than $1 billion in 2007, and federal support accounted for 78 percent of funding in 1978 but makes up just 3 percent today. Food & Water Watch is calling for the trust fund to enhance or replace the existing Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which it describes as a failed program that hasn't kept up with America's decaying, if little noticed, pipelines.

"Out of sight, out of mind doesn't work when it comes to something every American relies on," said Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat.

--Bret Schulte