This story originally featured on NewsRadio KFBK, Sacramento.
Our country’s water systems need nearly $5 trillion in investment over the next 20 years to keep them in good repair so water providers are using this year’s “Infrastructure Week” to highlight that need.
The water systems also get a D grade by the American Society of Civil Engineers, but in the Sacramento area and other places in California, we are doing a decent job of upgrading and maintaining our water delivery according to Radhika Fox, director of the Value of Water Coalition.
“Many of the water utilities in California, you have strong leaders, prudent investors in the water systems, have really stepped up in the face of being in the 5th year of epic drought,” Fox said.
Fox says there is such a huge gap between the need for investment and the actual money available that it is nearing crisis proportions, which is why her group is trying to educate politicians and the rest of us about the need to keep up a system that is mostly buried, so out of sight, out of mind.
Fox says a new round of big investment from the federal government is what is needed to move us in the right direction, and it would also mean jobs and billions in economic activity.
