As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to wage war against Iran, public frustration is at a boiling point. Eighteen U.S. service members have been killed since the war began. Their deaths underscore the senseless harm and waste of taxpayer resources in the Middle East while basic needs at home go unfunded and unaddressed.
Urgent needs at home: America’s decaying infrastructure
The nation’s municipal wastewater infrastructure is among those basic needs going unaddressed. Regardless of partisan political posturing over social issues, wastewater management is an essential public health and quality-of-life function in a modern industrialized society. It transcends — or should transcend — the red-blue divide.
But wastewater systems have been falling into disrepair across the United States for decades amid debates over the use of federal funding to support local infrastructure projects. States, cities and utilities now shoulder more than 90 percent of the cost of wastewater upgrades and repairs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Many can’t afford to pay, so they delay the expensive underground work that’s needed, often until it’s too late.
The urgent need to address civic infrastructure reached national headlines in January when a sewage pipeline collapsed and spilled more than 200 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the Potomac River in Maryland, near Washington, D.C. It was among the largest, if not the largest, such event in U.S. history.
Wastewater spills also left beaches and recreation areas closed in New York, Massachusetts and California ahead of the July 4 holiday. Just last week, another major spill into a tributary of the James River in Virginia alarmed residents and shuttered recreational areas nearby.
Researchers confirm these events are happening more frequently and will continue to happen until the U.S. invests what’s needed to bring its most basic systems into the 21st century. These investments aren’t glamorous, but they’re desperately needed and long overdue.
More U.S. infrastructure shows the signs of age
On July 2, a power system at a wastewater facility on the Hudson River north of New York City failed. The power loss sent an estimated 39 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the waterway, resulting in public health warnings and beach closures.
The same day on the other side of the country, a 2,000-gallon spill resulted when a wastewater pump failed in the city of Laguna Beach, California, leading officials to close a half-mile stretch of the coast to swimmers.
Dramatic events like these, though, are only part of the danger that outdated water systems pose to public health. Approximately 700 municipalities, largely but not exclusively concentrated in the northeast, have older drainage systems that combine wastewater with storm runoff. During periods of heavy rain or snowmelt, a combined system outruns the capacity of wastewater treatment plants, and the excess goes directly into local waterways, untreated.
These are so common in the U.S. they have a name: combined sewer overflows, or CSOs. While some have been remediated with holding tanks and other improvements over the years, they still happen regularly across the country. In April, for example, heavy rains led to a capacity overrun at a retention facility in Macomb County, Michigan, sending 1.2 million gallons of untreated wastewater into local waterways. Earlier this month, heavy rains led to CSO advisories covering parts of the Connecticut, Chicopee, and Mill Rivers in Connecticut.
For larger cities, the cumulative impact of CSOs is substantial. In Philadelphia alone, CSOs send an estimated 12.5 billion gallons of untreated sewage into the city’s waterways each year. And, despite substantial improvements since the 1970s, New York City’s CSO system continues to discharge an estimated 18 billion gallons of wastewater into the surrounding waterways annually.
Where does funding for wastewater upgrades come from?
The U.S. federal government once covered more than half the cost of wastewater and sewer system upgrades through direct grants to municipalities. But in 1987, the U.S. Congress replaced federal wastewater grants with loans through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
This fund totaled more than $160 billion in financial support for local water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure over its first 35 years. Through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 2014, the EPA also began issuing loans to municipalities, distributing $43 billion in financing over its first eight years. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law carved out $50 billion for water system upgrades, including $13 billion earmarked for wastewater and stormwater management.
But this is nowhere near the levels of investment needed to upgrade systems serving tens of millions of people, many of them decades past their intended retirements. Localities often end up covering the entire cost of wastewater projects, if they ever happen at all. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates more than $625 billion — and up to $1 trillion — will be needed for upgrades and repairs to water, wastewater, and stormwater systems over the next two decades.
Follow the money…to the Middle East
Since taking office last year, Trump has summarily withheld or suspended federal water system funding while proposing steep cuts to the EPA’s revolving loan programs. Though the country’s wastewater problems far predate the current administration, the prospect of new infrastructure investment at the levels needed is unlikely as Trump diverts billions in taxpayer dollars to fund his war in the Middle East and mass deportation campaign at home.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has estimated the cost of the Iran war at $37.5 billion so far. NBC News is among those reporting the costs are far higher, in the range of $80 billion to $100 billion in just five months. That figure includes the rising need to replace destroyed U.S. aircraft, repair damaged military facilities, and replenish the depleted weapons stockpile.
Four in five Americans now say they expect the war in Iran to continue “for an extended period.” While public opinion polls do not necessarily reflect voter behavior, a new poll commissioned by the news organization Politico shows that even Trump’s MAGA base has soured on the economic impact of the war.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have authorized more than $150 billion in funding for immigration enforcement over the past year alone, as public outrage rises over human rights and civil rights abuses by federal immigration agencies.
