The annual Imagine a Day Without Water campaign aims to bring awareness to the importance of water in so many aspects of our lives. Let's be honest, most of us take basic domestic water service—water in, waste out—for granted. It's not until the occasional service interruption that we actually have to consider what life would be like without it. But that's not the case for many people in the world. Today, more than 750 million people do not have access to clean and safe water, causing many to spend significant time and effort finding and carrying water from source to home, or be subject to the risk of disease if safe water cannot be accessed.

Critical Investments to Support Near Future Needs

More than 100 years ago, the U.S. began developing what was then state-of-the-art water and sanitation services. While there has been some investment in maintaining and upgrading these systems since then, the American Water Works Association estimates that $1 trillion is required to maintain and expand services to meet water demands for the next 25 years. Wastewater investment needs are of a similar magnitude. Nearly 6 billion gallons of treated water are lost through leaking pipes every day due to insufficient investments. The 240,000 water main breaks that occur each year result in 2 trillion gallons lost.

Our water and wastewater systems don't generally get the investments they need because we take them for granted and the infrastructure for these systems is mostly buried underground. If we see rusting bridges or potholes in our highways, we'll complain about them and rightly so, and they generally get resolved before failure. But far too often investments aren't allocated to buried infrastructure until after failure. Make no mistake, it costs significantly more to repair infrastructure in an emergency situation than to upgrade it proactively.

Water Usage: Beer, Jeans, and Gadgets

The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2017 Infrastructure Report Card grades our wastewater systems as a D+ and our potable water systems as a D. This is disheartening news for something so critical to our society and economy, because it's not just drinking, sanitation, and personal cleanliness at play here. It takes thousands of gallons of water to manufacture the components in a car; your jeans require significant water before you put them on (you've got to water cotton plants). It takes more than 40 gallons of water to make one pint of beer. Even your cellphone, computer, and other electronics require enormous amounts of highly treated water during the manufacturing process.

Water: Enjoy It, Conserve It, Respect It—But Don't Take It For Granted

Today please take some time to think about and reflect on how your life would be impacted if you had limited access to water for 24 hours. As you continue to browse the internet and check your email, remember that the buttons you are pressing required a lot of water to get them under your fingers.