It’s Water Week! Here’s why: It’s good to keep up our success

We don’t bury all our pipes to hide what we’re doing. Honest, we don’t. And this week, all of us in the clean water profession want to remind you that your support helps us do our job.

This is Water Week 2018. A lot of people who provide clean drinking water and clean up wastewater are in Washington, D.C., talking to our representatives about our jobs.

Government funding isn’t keeping up with what we need to do our jobs, unfortunately.

We get it when people suggest clean water funding isn’t as important as other infrastructure. We don’t see the need to maintain, repair and upgrade our hidden pipes; we see the potholes and traffic jams that convince people to spend money on roads and bridges.

The need is there, however. It’s obvious when a water main breaks and people don’t have water to drink or clean dishes, or businesses close. In fact, without more investment, engineers predict we could lose $7.5 trillion in sales and a $41 trillion overall loss to our economy by 2040.

We’ve made a lot of progress since the Clean Water Act passed in the 1970s. We can swim and fish in our rivers, and they don’t catch fire like some of our industrial rivers used to. Remember the last typhoid or cholera outbreak from polluted rivers? Neither do we.

What can you do? If you agree that the equipment and pipes to keep our water clean is worth it, mention it to your U.S. and state representatives. You can find more information and specifics here: www.waterweek.us

Craig Lincoln, Environmental Programs Coordinator