Green New Deal Plan - Food/Environmental Reconstruction

Reconstruct water infrastructure

There are several aspects of a functioning water system: drinking systems, wastewater systems, levees, climate change mitigation, and dams. Currently, state and local governments are responsible for the cost of fixing these systems. With the general lack of revenues that local governments are experiencing, it is no wonder that water systems are deteriorating. The Green New Deal would provide Federal funds for fixing the water systems of the country, thus freeing funds for other local government needs.

Reliable drinking water must be available to all inhabitants. In their report card for drinking water, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates that $1 trillion is needed to fix the nation's water systems. That is $50 billion per year if implemented in 20 years. As we have seen in Flint, this is a high priority part of the infrastructure.

In the wastewater report card of the ASCE, it is estimated that fixing waste water systems would cost about $300 billion over 20 years, which comes out to about $15 billion per year, but let's double that to account for climate change mitigation, to $30 billion per year.

Levees account for another $80 billion, according to the ASCE. Let's double that number to account for climate-change related construction work, for instance, for New York City. Then we have $8 billion per year Finally, the ASCE says that we need $45 billion to fix dams in danger of collapsing. Let's assume $2 billion per year
So our totals for cost and jobs are the following:

Drinking Water: 50 billion
Wastewater: 30 billion
Levees: 8 billion
Dams: 2 billion
Total: 90 billion, rounded up