The Aged Pipes

Yesterday, I was listening to NPR's Environment podcast that highlights all environmental stories broadcast over the past week. One story on the state of our water infrastructure here in the United States really stood out. An expert on our water supply told of how we have a really old infrastructure and replacement policy has ridiculously long time frames. In fact, based on current policies nationwide, most regions would experience three 1-in-100 year storm events before they would replace their water infrastructure. Think of that. We expect cast iron pipes to last all the pressures put upon them to last roughly 300 years.

This news story really made me take a new look at the water crisis that is emerging. As I have written before, finding and sustaining water supply will be a challenge in the coming years due to climate change and over usage. However, what if we have a water supply but the delivery system is prone to massive breaks? This was recently demonstrated on the UCLA campus in California where more than 20 million gallons of water shot to the surface after a 93-year old water main broke there. Here in New York City, water main breaks are a frequent occurrence.

The NPR story rightly pointed out that we don't think about our water infrastructure enough, and we are unwilling to pay the price for upgrades. Again, water is an essential resource. We need it, and with water supplies ever decreasing, we need to ensure that delivery is efficient with no loss along the way to our glasses or bathtubs. We may have more advanced water infrastructure than many parts of the world, but the materials are outdated and if we don't address the problems, we will be no better off than a rural community in the developing world that relies on a single well in the town square where residents must carry their water away in buckets. The solution to this problem is easy enough, fix the replacement policies and get water users (commercial and industrial building owners, homeowners, and farmers) to pay just a few dollars more every month so that our communities can invest in updating and replacing our water infrastructure. The key to this easy solution is us pressuring our lawmakers, as it always is.

Urbanites

One of the biggest challenges we face as a species is how to deal with increased urbanization. More and more of us are living in what can be termed urban centers. The density of population clusters in and around cities continues to rise on a monumental scale. Yes, some of this can be attributed to a growing human population, but what we are witnessing now is whole scale migration from rural areas to high population centers.

Some have argued that urbanization can actually be good for the environment. It is true that with good city planning, an urban center can bring down emissions with the help of mass transit, LEED standard buildings, and city policy that favors practices that take environmental stewardship into account. In New York City, citizens' average carbon footprint is smaller than the citizens of Vermont due to the availability of mass transit and walkability of the city.

Of course this doesn't hold true for every city. Los Angeles is much more car-oriented and therefore has a higher carbon footprint per capita than other cities. There are also other factors we must consider that increased urbanization is having on the environment. As human population continues to increase, food production must increase. By concentrating our numbers in cities, food production must occur with less hands and greater reliance on mechanical and industrial techniques. While it is hoped that technology and policy will help to steer farming practices to an eco-friendly path, this cannot be guaranteed to happen within every country. Food production also relies heavily on the use of water, and without improved techniques can actually degrade overall water quality. After food is produced, it must be transported to cities and preserved until consumption, contributing to the overall human carbon footprint.

Additionally, urbanization requires the development of infrastructure. Construction can be quite carbon intensive, whether it be the building of residential and commercial complexes, or tunneling underground to develop mass transit or sewage systems. While humans are developing sustainable materials and practices, when it comes down to it construction will always be a huge factor in our impact on the environment/climate.

These are just a couple of examples of the challenges we must address as we become an urban species. I am not against urbanization at all (seeing as I'm a proud resident of NYC), but clearly there are better ways to frame a city within an environmental context than others. For our current urban centers, further planning and adjustment must be undertaken to ensure we are reducing our footprint and impact on local ecosystems. For emerging urban areas, city planners and officials must take into account that they have a chance to show a city can be prosperous and environmentally conscious from the outset. Beyond cities, farmers, ranchers, and those who make agricultural policy must look for ways to drastically cut their impacts on the environment. Urbanization is happening, but we must think of the challenges that are appearing and we must take the right steps now.