America Can Fix Its Crumbling Water Infrastructure, If You Help Pay For It

• Logan Layden
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  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

Logan Layden / StateImpact Oklahoma

An sludge pump built in the 1930s is still in use at the Konawa, Okla. wastewater treatment plant.

New Deal programs in the 1930s and federal construction grants through the ’70s helped build America’s vast water infrastructure.

Now the rapidly aging treatment plants and pipelines need to be replaced, but the generous programs of the past are long gone. Ratepayers will ultimately have to shoulder a large portion of the $1 trillion burden.

Few communities have more water problems than Konawa, Okla., where, after 80 years, the town’s pipes finally failed citizens.