Deep Trouble

By Madeline Bodin

On April 25, 2014, Flint, Michigan, Mayor Dayne Walling pressed a small button on a valve bolted to the wall of the Flint Water Treatment Plant to shunt the city's water source from the Detroit water system to the Flint River. Officials raised clear plastic glasses of Flint River water in celebration and said it would take two days for the river water to replace the Detroit water flowing through the system.

The complaints started nearly that quickly. The water was yellow. It smelled bad. Kids had rashes. Their hair fell out. There were hundreds of water main breaks, although these still haven't been connected to the water source switch. The first problem, discovered nine months after the switch, was toxic levels of disinfection by-products. The second problem took longer to discover.

The severity of Flint's problem with lead-tainted drinking water shocked the nation. Ultimately, the Flint Water Advisory Task Force would find that the elevated lead levels were caused by a combination of lead pipes, the failure to add a chemical that routinely protects the lead in pipes from leaching into drinking water, and improper lead testing methods.

"It was a lesson in what not to do," says John Donahue, chief executive officer of the North Park Public Water District in Machesney Park, Illinois, and the immediate past president of the American Water Works Association.

Our nation's water systems are buried and so are their problems. The Flint crisis drew attention to a crucial aspect of our daily lives that we had taken for granted: water. Our nation's water infrastructure is in deep trouble, and lead is just a small part of it.

What role is there for planners in solving this crisis? Traditional views of both water management and planning give planners almost no role. But some in the water industry are promoting a forward-thinking vision of integrated water management. APA has joined them. In this vision, planning is welcome at the table as a valued partner.

Two cities, one lead solution

Municipalities around the country have responded to the Flint water crisis in the most basic way possible: by planning to get rid of their lead pipes. This annoys some drinking water industry experts, who don't see Flint's problem as being caused by lead pipes. Lead pipes are common. Lead poisoning from drinking water is rare.

To neutralize lead, the standard industry practice is to add a chemical, orthophosphate, to drinking water. The chemical binds with the lead in the pipes, coating the pipes and making it less likely that lead will leach into the water.

But while there are legal limits on lead exposure from drinking water, there is no level of lead that is considered safe, especially for children. Two cities — Madison, Wisconsin, and Lansing, Michigan — began removing the lead pipes from their drinking water distribution system over a decade ago. Today, they find themselves offering advice to other municipalities that want to do the same.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency created stricter standards for lead and copper in public drinking water systems with the 1991 Lead and Copper Rule, Wisconsin's capital city found itself slightly over the new limit for lead. Conventional wisdom said that adding orthophosphate would reduce the lead levels to below the federal limit.

The city had other ideas, says Amy Barrilleaux, public information officer for the Madison Water Utility, a city agency. The city's two lakes were already suffering from too much phosphorus. Adding the lead-binding chemical to the city's water would cost money, burden wastewater treatment facilities with its removal, and still add phosphorus to the lakes.

Instead, the city decided to remove the lead pipes from its water system. As is true everywhere, the lead was not in the water mains, but in the service pipes that run between the water mains and each building.

Water utilities typically own less than half of the service pipe — generally up to the curb line. Replacing just the utility's side of the service pipe wouldn't reduce lead levels, Barrilleaux says.

In 2000, the Madison Common Council passed an ordinance requiring property owners to replace their lead service pipes. The city would pay half the cost of the replacement up to $1,000. The average total cost was $1,340 per property, meaning the city's average reimbursement was $670.

At the top of the replacement list were schools, apartment buildings, and locations that had tested high for lead, says Barrilleaux. After that, the service replacement piggybacked on schedules for road repaving.

The city worked with home owners so that privately hired plumbers could replace the home owner side while the pipe was exposed for the city's work.

The project took 11 years, wrapping up in 2012. It cost $15.5 million, replacing 8,000 service lines on the city side and 5,600 on the property owner's side. (Property owners had been replacing their lead service lines on their own for decades.) The utility financed the replacement by renting space on water towers to cell phone companies. The state public service commission didn't allow the city to use ratepayer funds for the reimbursements.

Lansing, Michigan, began removing 14,000 lead service pipes in 2004 and expects to finish sometime next year. Lansing is unusual because the Board of Power and Light owns the whole service pipe right to the water meter, says Stephen Serkaian, executive director of public affairs for the utility.

In many ways, this simplified the project. The Board of Power and Light spent $42 million on pipe replacement, Serkaian says, funding it from the profits of its electric, steam, chilled water, and drinking water services.

The project overlapped with the city's combined sewer overflow replacement project, so the roads didn't have to be torn up twice, Serkaian says. The utility developed a trenchless pipe replacement process that allows a four-person crew to replace two service lines a day, which is faster and less expensive than digging a trench.

Lansing is sharing its innovative technique — which involves drawing the new pipe into one hole as the old pipe is pulled out of the other — with Flint as that city begins its lead service replacement project.

Barrilleaux and Serkaian say that planners had no significant role in their cities' lead service line replacement program.

Workers from the Board of Water and Light in Lansing, Michigan, dig up a lead water pipe in January 2016. The utility used a technique that's quicker and cheaper than digging trenches. It involves drawing the new pipe into one hole as the old pipe is pulled out another. Laura McDermott/The New York Times.

Beyond the lead crisis

Lead is a tiny part of our nation's water infrastructure crisis. Water utilities have been aware of the threat of aging water infrastructure for years.

Four years ago, AWWA published a report, Buried No Longer: America's Water Infrastructure Challenge, that outlined a foreseeable crisis. The construction of American drinking water systems boomed during the second industrial revolution, about 150 years ago. The cast iron water mains installed during this period have a lifespan of about 130 years.

There was a second boom in drinking water infrastructure construction as America's population and economy expanded just after World War II, about 70 years ago. The steel, asbestos cement, and concrete water mains installed during this period have a lifespan of 70 to 100 years, the report says. All at once, both generations of America's drinking water pipes — more than a million miles of infrastructure — are reaching the end of their life expectancy.

"Investment needs for buried drinking water infrastructure total more than $1 trillion nationwide over the next 25 years, assuming pipes are replaced at the end of their service lives and systems are expanded to serve growing populations," the report concludes.

A year later the American Society of Civil Engineers, using AWWA's data, gave the nation's drinking water infrastructure a grade of D. ASCE's report pointed out that the rate of investment in water infrastructure lags far behind the need. Aging pipes lead to 240,000 water main breaks each year and 75 percent of the money needed is for repairs.

One of the main sources for funding for water infrastructure maintenance and improvements are the state revolving loan funds, which are funded by the federal government through the EPA and administered by each state, says Tracy Mehan, executive director of government affairs for AWWA.

These funds haven't kept pace with the need, so AWWA has been pushing for Congress to pass the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, a credit assistance program modeled on similar legislation that funds transportation projects, he says.

WIFIA is part of the Water Resources Development Act, which made it out of its senate committee last spring. Mehan is confident this legislation is going to go the distance and become law. He says that the EPA is already staffing up for the additional workload.

New York State went in another direction with its Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2015. Last year it awarded $75 million in grants to 45 communities for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure improvement projects, and will award $175 million in the second round. This is in addition to the $1 billion a year the state distributes through its revolving loan fund.

A new vision of water, a new role for planners

The traditional role for planners in water management is to predict the rate and location of development for water utilities, and to protect water sources by limiting development around reservoirs and above groundwater recharge sites. "Planners put the lines on the paper," says Donahue, "but mostly they are not civil engineers. They don't decide how big the lines are."

"Because of the drought in the West, situations like Flint and a lack of investment in water infrastructure, the American Planning Association would like planners to take a stronger role in managing our water environment," says Bill Cesanek, aicp, a vice president for urban and infrastructure planning at CDM Smith, a global environmental and infrastructure consulting firm, and the chair of APA's Water Working Group.

"Planning is about managing growth and land development," Cesanek says, "but it's also about managing the impact of growth on our environment, including natural resources like water."

When the Water Working Group presented its findings at the APA 2015 National Planning Conference, the crowd spilled out of the conference room and into the hallway, says Cesanek. The group's core themes suggest a larger water management role for planners:

WATER IS A CENTRAL and essential organizing element in a healthy urban environment.

PLANNING PRACTICE needs to apply an integrated, systems-oriented approach to water management.

EFFECTIVE WATER MANAGEMENT requires interdisciplinary interaction among urban planning and design, engineering, landscape architecture, architecture, hydrology, and other specialties.

To find out how those core themes might fit into the day-to-day work of planners, the group is, among other tasks, researching best practices for planners engaging in water management issues, says Cesanek. Planners' traditional strengths of long-range thinking and focus on sustainability will be valuable.

The Water Working Group is also exploring the water management concept of "one water," which encourages water and energy sustainability through an integrated approach. Instead of seeing water as a one-way flow from source to being flushed away and each water use (water, sewer, stormwater) as separate management silos, it sees water as an interacting web of uses.

One water inspired the use of green infrastructure to manage stormwater runoff in Philadelphia and Cincinnati and many other cities; the use of traditional gray infrastructure to reclaim graywater in California and Pinellas County, Florida; and the daylighting of streams in Seattle and Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Drought only adds to the water infrastructure problem, which is why places like El Segundo, California, are recycling wastewater for human consumption. A little boy gives the highly treated water a taste during a tour of the Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility last year. David McNew/Reuters.

Planning for the future of water in LA

Los Angeles is investing for the future using "one water" principles. The One Water LA Plan will guide the city's water infrastructure development through 2040, integrating water supply, wastewater treatment, and storm water management, says Lenise Marrero, an environmental engineer with the city's Wastewater Engineering Services Division.

The planning department and its own bold vision for the future are welcome partners. "re:code LA is the city's first opportunity in over 40 years to create a new streamlined zoning code," says Marrero. "Through One Water, while they look at the zoning code, they will keep water issues in the forefront."

For example, the new zoning code will improve groundwater recharge, says Erick Lopez, a city planner who is the project manager for re:code LA. Improving groundwater volume and quality is one way Los Angeles plans to reduce its dependence on water piped in from outside the region.

Until a few years ago, planning ordinances didn't allow permeable pavement in the city, Lopez says. Those rules were changed so that permeable pavement can be used in areas where the soil allows surface water to filter through and recharge the groundwater. Now the planning department is looking at more ways to enhance groundwater recharging, such as using bioswales to direct water within a site to allow it to infiltrate into the groundwater.

Serge Haddad, manager of the Department of Water and Power's Water Recycling Policy Group, is also looking to the city's planning department to assist with his department's efforts to increase local water supplies through rainwater capture strategies such as cisterns, spreading basins, and the use of recycled water — reclaimed after extra-thorough wastewater treatment — which is distributed separately from drinking water through a system of purple pipes.

"Any time planners look at how they can codify low-impact development, it's a benefit for water management," Haddad says. "That's another thing that One Water does, it gives us more opportunity to work with other city departments."

One Water LA is still more concept than accomplishment, but it offers hope that there is a way to leapfrog our current water infrastructure crisis into a sustainable future. "Do we want to invest in fixing and maintaining the infrastructure of the last 100 years," Cesanek asks, "or do we want to invest in the infrastructure of the next 100 years?" n Madeline Bodin is a freelance journalist who frequently writes about science and the environment.

Resources

American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report: tinyurl.com/c6rxtef. AWWA water infrastructure report: tinyurl.com/bou9svq.

Madison's lead service line replacement program: tinyurl.com/gu9urdm