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Basic Information
The Safe Drinking Water Act requires that EPA conduct an assessment of the national public water system capital improvement needs every four years. The purpose of the survey is to document the 20-year capital investment needs of public water systems that are eligible to receive Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) monies — approximately 55,000 community water systems and 21,400 not-for-profit non-community water systems. The survey reports infrastructure needs that are required to protect public health, such as projects to ensure compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Total 20-Year Need by Project Type
(in billions of January 2003 dollars) |
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Note: Numbers may not total due to rounding. |
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The first report, released in 1999, reflected data collected in 1995. The total needs reported for the first survey was $138.4 billion (1995 dollars). The second report, released in 2001, reflected data collected in 1999 and indicated a total need of $150.9 billion (1999 dollars). In 2003, conducted its third Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey. The total needs reported in the third survey, which was released in 2005, were $276.8 billion - a value much greater than the needs that had been reported in the previous two surveys.
In support of improving asset management, the survey for the 2003 assessment was redesigned to encourage utilities to better consider the infrastructure investments they would need to make over the next 20 years. Therefore, the 2003 assessment more accurately captures needs that were under-reported in earlier assessments, particularly costs needed to address necessary rehabilitation and replacement of deteriorating infrastructure. The large magnitude of the national need reflects the challenges confronting water systems as they deal with an infrastructure network that has aged considerably since these systems were constructed, in many cases, 50 to 100 years ago.
In every assessment conducted to date, transmission and distribution projects have represented the largest category of need. This result is consistent with the fact that transmission and distribution mains account for most of the nation’s drinking water infrastructure. The other categories, in descending order of need, are treatment, storage, source and a miscellaneous category of needs called “other.”
The report is developed in consultation with a workgroup of consisting State, American Indian, Alaska Native Village, and water utility representatives. To conduct the survey, EPA selects a set number of systems to serve as a statistical representation of an industry that has over 54,000 community water systems and 21,400 non-for-profit noncommunity water systems. The Agency sends questionnaires all of the nation’s large water serving more than 40,000 people and a random sample of about one-third of the medium systems serving more than 3,300 people. For the first two surveys, EPA also questioned a representative number of community water systems serving fewer than 3,300 people - including American Indian and Alaskan Native Village systems. For the 2003 survey, EPA utilized inflation factors to update the results of the 1999 findings that were derived from extensive field efforts. The response rate for the systems which receive a questionnaire is high - approximately 95%.
As directed by the SDWA, EPA uses the results of the survey to determine the allocation of the hundreds of million of annual DWSRF dollars to the States and Tribes for helping build and improve the Nation’s infrastructure for delivering safe drinking water. A Federal Register notice announcing the revised allotment percentages based on the results of the most recent survey is released shortly after release of the report every four years.
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