Green Jobs for Clean Water

Congress is about to make a decision that could affect whether your family and future generations will have clean streams to swim in, fish that are safe to eat, and safe, sufficient tap water to meet your needs.  What am I talking about?  It isn't environmental legislation.  It's the stimulus (or economic recovery bill). The purpose of the bill is to stimulate the economy and provide jobs for Americans, but it matters how we do that.  We should spend money on jobs that cannot be exported, that will employ people who wouldn't otherwise have jobs, and that will add value to the society as a whole.  I think water and wastewater fits the bill.  Thousands of jobs are created for every billion dollars spent - jobs that employ engineers, construction workers, plumbers, architects, maintenance workers, all kinds of skills.  These investments also provide long term benefits.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government had a program called the construction grants program that built sewage treatment plants across the country.  Without that program, Lake Erie would still be dead, the smell from Onondaga Lake in Syracuse would still be overwhelming, and, here in DC the Potomac River would be a national disgrace.  Unfortunately, after several decades, that investment has pretty much run its course.  Now another investment is needed to add advanced treatment, replace decaying pipes, and to address problems that we didn't fix back then, like stormwater pollution and overflows from sewer systems that have sewage and stormwater in the same set of pipes.  We can also make our water and wastewater infrastructure more resilient in light of the impacts that we are already seeing from climate change, like more heavy storms, more flooding, and more widespread drought.  I especially like the kinds of projects that allow communities to invest in restoring their water resources and in reviving urban populations.  Planting trees, building green roofs, restoring wetlands, and putting in rain gardens all beautify communities and have been shown to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, raise property values, and provide wildlife habitat.