Beneath city streets and suburban neighborhoods, a vast network of pipes and wastewater treatment systems is reaching the end of its life. This subterranean infrastructure is already suffering tens of thousands of failures per year, while exposing millions of Americans to contamination risks.
Utilities, plumbing experts, and environmentalists warn that the scope of the problem has expanded rapidly in recent years. As of 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that $630 billion in wastewater infrastructure investment would be needed to repair and replace deteriorating systems. At the same time, extreme weather events and growing populations were putting additional strain on America’s aging pipes.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), in its 2025 report card, gave U.S. wastewater infrastructure a D-plus, which the group largely attributed to a lack of funding to meet the needs of communities with failing systems.
Meanwhile, average utility prices for wastewater consumers increased from $35 per month to nearly $65 per month between 2010 and 2020, ASCE researchers found. Even still, they said, rising utility prices aren’t “keeping pace with the growing costs for utilities to provide routine operation and maintenance.”
Paradoxically, as household water and sewer bills increased more than 24 percent between 2020 and 2025, wastewater infrastructure renewal and replacement rates for large-scale projects actually decreased over the past decade, from 3 percent to 2 percent, according to the ASCE analysis.
The scope of the problem becomes clearer when considering the sheer volume of sanitary sewer overflows. As of April 2025, the EPA estimated there were between 23,000 and 75,000 overflow incidents per year, and that didn’t include sewage that backed up into buildings or residential homes.
Some of the reasons for these spills included blockages, line breaks, design defects, and overloaded treatment systems.
A spokesperson for the EPA told The Epoch Times that the agency is “committed to accelerating investments in water infrastructure by stewarding federal funding appropriated by Congress.”
Recent funding highlights from 2025 include the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which committed $13 billion for infrastructure improvements in communities across the nation, according to the EPA spokesperson.
Hellbound and Down 