Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Alexi Sayson
English 910.3
Professor Turner
October 24,2016
According to the U.S. Geological Survey 1.7 trillion gallons of water is lost every year due to
main breaks and other leaks. This is enough water to provide the United States top 10 cities with
clean water for a year. The federal government estimates that the water lost from water main
breaks is worth about $2.6 billion annually. ( Columbia Water Center). There are many reasons
why the United States is losing so much water but this is the main reason. The pipes are old and
broken but it costs too much to fix every single pipe. The United States is going through a water
crisis and leaking pipes are the main reason why we are having that problem.
We get our water from two main sources. The two sources are groundwater and surface water.
Ground water can be taken from aquifers. An aquifer is a body of permeable rock that contains or
transmits groundwater. The second source of water is surface water. Examples of surface water
are lakes and rivers. There are three sectors that use the water we get from these sources. These
are agriculture, industry, and residential. The number one sector that uses the fresh water is
Agriculture. According to Christiana Peppard (2016), agriculture uses 70% of all our fresh water,
industry uses 22% and residential only uses 8% of the fresh water we get. (Peppard)
At this moment many states in the United States is going through a water crisis or scarcity.
Water scarcity is the lack of sufficient available water resources to meet water needs within a
region. So that means that the United States s running out of water for our everyday needs. One
problem that comes with this is that not many people in America are getting this information and
Population Growth
Water Scarcity
The United States population has grown about 99% since 1950 and that came with a 127%
increase in water use. (Grace Wyler). According to Wyler, 48% of the states in the United States
are experiencing moderate to exceptional drought. This is almost half of the United States
going through droughts and are losing the fresh water that they use everyday. And many
Americans dont have any idea that this is happening and also if the state they live in is is that
48%.
One reason why we are having water scarcity in the U.S. is because of our leaking
infrastructure. There are many gallons of water lost in many different cities around the country.
In the article , L.As aging water pipes; a $1- billion dilemma by Ben Poston and Matt Stevens, it
gives examples of Los Angeles and Chicago and how they are losing water because of leaky
pipes. L.A. is losing 8 billion gallons of water a year due to leaky pipes. ( Ben Poston and Matt
Stevens). And according to Schaper Chicago is losing about 22 billion gallons of water per year
Leaky Infrastructure
There are many reasons why the pipes are leaking including; the age of the pipes, rust, and the
weather. Most pipes in the United States are almost 100 years old. For example, in Schapers
article he writes that in Los Angeles a water main estimated to be 93 years old broke and caused
severe flooding on UCLAs main campus. One reason why the pipes are breaking is the rust that
forms around the pipes. The rust makes the pipe brittle and easily breakable. Another reason is
the weather weve been having. Schaper informs us that, Last winters extremely bitter cold in
the Midwest and Northeast was especially tough on the aging infrastructure in those parts of the
Water Scarcity
country. But water main breaks are becoming common in the hot summer months now.
(Schaper).
There is one reason why we havent fixed these pipes yet. Fixing and changing these pipes
would cost us all an arm and a leg. In Schapers article he says that, the federal government
estimates that the water lost just from main breaks is worth about $2.6 billion annually. The EPA
has estimated that approximately $1 trillion will be needed to fix the water infrastructures in the
next 20 years.We are currently falling short by about $19 billion per year. (Columbia Water
Now the question of when and how to fix the pipes are in the works but not a lot of action is
happening. Poston and Stevens (2015) informs us that the DWP has a plan to replace 435 miles
of deteriorating water mains in the next 10 years. DWP would need more than double the number
of pipe miles it replaces annually and more than triple the average amount it spends on pipes to
America is currently having a water crisis. There are many reasons why we are having a water
crisis here and one of the main reasons is because we have leaky pipes and not enough money to
fix them all. In conclusion, America is having a water crisis and the main cause are our leaky
pipes . We need to figure out a way to stop the pipes from leaking and how to get the money to