I caught today’s edition of Terri Gross’ “Fresh Air” in the car this morning. She interviewed Charles Fishman who is a senior writer at Fast Company and the author of The Wal-Mart Effect. He’s now turned his pen towards the world wide quest for water.
There were some very relevant sections in the interview;
On the antiquated municipal water systems in the United States
“The average U.S. home pays an average of $34 a month. So our always-on, unlimited, almost universally reliably safe water costs us about $1 a day. Our water bill is less than half what our cable TV bill or our cell phone bill is. So cities are starved for financial resources and water utilities are often in terrible shape. In Philadelphia, there are 3,300 miles of water mains in the city, and they replace 20 miles a year. They’re on 160-year replacement cycles. One of the officials from the Philadelphia water utility said to me, ‘We want to make sure we get the 20 miles right.’ That’s not a question of money, it’s a question of public resistance to digging up streets.”
On taking the water system for granted
“One of the big problems of water is that the success of the golden age of water has created an invisible system. We don’t even take [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][water] for granted because taking it for granted would suggest we pay attention to it. That hidden system is corroding, and as it corrodes, it even corrodes our support for public water. We think, ‘Why should I pay more for water? I’ll just go buy bottled water.’ But, in fact, we don’t actually spend that much money supporting the system. In the U.S., we spend $21 billion a year buying bottled water, and we spend $29 billion a year maintaining the entire water system — pipes, treatment plants, pumps. We spend almost as much on crushable plastic bottles of water as we do maintaining the water system.”
Listen to the interview at the NPR website.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
