America’s aging water system will require an extensive touch up job. As the U.S. overhauls its infrastructure, water industry related exchange traded funds could pump out big returns.
The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that the U.S. water infrastructure will require $384 billion in upgrades from 2011 through 2030, reports Mark Koba for CNBC. The non-profit American Water Works Association estimates that more than $1.7 trillion will be needed to fix the water system between 2011 and 2050. [Water ETFs to Play Infrastructure Needs]
“Every two minutes there’s a water pipe breaking in the U.S.,” Shafiqul Islam, a professor and director of the Water Diplomacy Initiative at Tufts University, said in the article. “We’ve been putting band aids on this, but we can’t do that anymore.”
“A lot of these systems have passed their shelf life,” Cindy Wallis-Lage, president of Black & Veatch, said in the CNBC report.
Meanwhile, the cost of doing nothing is starting to stack up.
“The American Civil Engineers said that gross domestic product losses from not upgrading could be $416 billion by 2020 from the constant system breakdowns and constant repairs instead of doing it right,” Islam added. “We lose about 1.7 trillion gallons of water a year from pipe breaks.”