Public-private partnerships may be a way to pay
WASHINGTON, June 12: With US water bills on the rise even as consumers are being urged to use less, more than 70 per cent of water companies either lack the funds to maintain aging infrastructure or have just enough to meet requirements, a new industry survey reports.
Much of the financial pressure on US water utilities comes from the price of energy, which accounts for as much as 30 per cent of their operating costs, according to the survey
released today by Black & Veatch, a $2.6 billion global engineering business that designs water systems.
One big concern is infrastructure, such as pipes, treatment plants, pumps and equipment, said Ralph Eberts, the company’s executive vice president for global water.
“We ge+t to situations where you have infrastructure that’s breaking, it creates chaos for our cities,” Eberts said in a telephone interview. “ … We’ve got to get investments in place to get those problems fixed.
“It probably boils down to, the price of water’s going to
have to go up, and the public needs to understand why that is.”
These financial and public relations pressures come as population growth increases demand for water globally, especially in the developing world where usage is expected to
rise by 50 per cent between 2007 and 2025, according to the World Resources Institute.
The problem is that some US water utilities cannot afford to completely replace old pipe as they might have done in the past, because their budgets are tighter now and they cannot
raise money easily by issuing government bonds, Eberts said.
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(AGENCIES)
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