Giving Thanks to Water and Sanitation Workers

And those who built it.

Most people rarely think about water or sanitation until something breaks. Then it becomes obvious that these systems are not background conveniences but the quiet foundation of public health, economic life and community stability. 

If it weren’t for water and sanitation systems, we would probably all be sick with cholera.

History shows why the government must treat water and sanitation with the same seriousness as energy and transportation and defense. Yet the condition of America’s systems has become a national liability.

America’s Water Systems Are Failing

The American Society of Civil Engineers consistently gives U.S. drinking water and wastewater systems poor grades. In its 2021 Report Card, drinking water earned a C-, wastewater a D+, and stormwater a D. These grades barely improved in the 2025 update, signaling stagnation rather than progress.

The symptoms are widespread:

• There is a water main break every two minutes in the United States, wasting an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water daily.

• More than 9 million Americans still receive water through lead service lines, decades after the health impacts of lead exposure became indisputable.

• Aging stormwater systems overflow during extreme rain events, sending untreated sewage into rivers and lakes.

• Rural systems struggle with failing treatment plants; urban systems face chronic underinvestment and crisis-level boil-water notices.

The deeper reality is structural. The United States operates more than 50,000 separate water utilities that are fragmented, uneven and often underfunded. These systems depend heavily on local ratepayers, even though their risks are national in scale. And the operating and maintenance (O&M) funds are being stripped at an accelerating rate. 

Living Off the Fumes of the New Deal Water and Sanitation Transformation

We have not seen a credible industrial policy in the U.S. since the New Deal.

When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, much of the United States still lived with 19th-century water and sanitation systems. Rural homes relied on wells, privies and surface water. Many cities used outdated pipes and inadequate sewage treatment. Floods regularly devastated river towns. Waterborne diseases such as typhoid, dysentery and parasitic infections were still major public-health threats.

The New Deal did not merely upgrade old systems. It redefined water and sanitation as national infrastructure and laid the foundations of the modern American public-health state.

Even before the Depression, many cities were dangerously behind in water and sewer improvements. Local governments had no capital, banks were failing and private utilities offered little help. The New Deal changed that by unleashing public credit at a scale that had never existed before.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) financed hundreds of major water and sewer projects, including:

• New filtration and chlorination facilities

• Construction and expansion of wastewater treatment plants

• Replacement of leaking or obsolete municipal water mains

• Urban sewer tunnels, pump stations and stormwater systems

These were not cosmetic improvements. PWA money often paid for the first modern sewage treatment plants in dozens of U.S. cities, many of which had previously dumped raw sewage directly into rivers.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) focused on labor-intensive projects:

• Laying water mains

• Installing sanitary sewers

• Building reservoirs, storm drains and culverts

• Improving rural and small-town water supplies

The WPA employed tens of thousands of plumbers, pipefitters, laborers and engineers. It strengthened both public health and organized labor by formalizing the dignity of this work.

Bringing Water and Sanitation to Rural America

In 1930, over 80 percent of rural homes lacked running water and indoor plumbing. Wells, cisterns and outhouses were the norm. The New Deal pursued an ambitious goal: to bring modern sanitation to America’s countryside.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built:

• Wells

• Latrines

• Water storage tanks

• Sanitary camps

• Erosion-control projects that protected watersheds

Though best known for forestry and parks, the CCC made major contributions to the physical infrastructure needed for clean water.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) funded:

• Rural community water systems

• Sanitary farmhouses

• Water-supply cooperatives

These systems became the backbone of today’s rural water associations, which now serve millions of Americans.

Controlling Floods, Securing Rivers and Changing Hydrology

The New Deal recognized that water supply and sanitation could not be separated from river systems, soil stability and flood control.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) reshaped the Southeast by:

• Building multipurpose dams

• Controlling floodwaters

• Improving navigation

• Providing hydroelectric power

• Supporting municipal water systems and industrial water needs

TVA dams reduced disease by stabilizing water flow, controlling malaria-bearing mosquitoes and supporting modern sanitation in a region that had long suffered from water insecurity.

New Deal investments expanded the role of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build:

• Levees

• Reservoirs

• Drainage basins

• Flood-control channels

Secure rivers create secure water systems. The New Deal connected these domains in a way few previous administrations understood.

Public Health Improvements and Scientific Innovation

Before the New Deal, many communities lacked the money or expertise to build filtration or disinfection systems. With federal money, thousands of communities installed:

• Sand filtration

• Chlorination systems

• Early wastewater treatment

• Laboratory testing capacity

The result was a dramatic decline in waterborne diseases. By the 1940s, typhoid fever—once a persistent urban killer dropped to a tiny fraction of earlier rates. This deliberate public health policy planning was backed by federal credit and local labor.

Strengthening Labor, Technical Expertise and National Standards

Millions of workers built and maintained New Deal water systems with unionized laborers, engineers, plumbers, masons, electricians and operators.

The New Deal:

• Formalized public water and sanitation work as a skilled profession

• Supported unions in the water and sewer sectors

• Established training pathways through WPA, PWA and TVA projects

• Created a generation of technical workers who ran modern plants for decades

This is why many systems built in the 1930s and 1940s lasted into the 21st century. They were well-designed, publicly funded and professionally maintained.

Much of America still drinks and flushes New Deal infrastructure and many cities continue to rely on:

• Water mains laid by WPA crews

• Treatment plants built with PWA grants

• Reservoirs and dams developed under New Deal programs

• River systems stabilized by TVA and Corps projects

America’s mid-20th-century expansion was possible only because New Deal water and sanitation systems existed.

What the New Deal teaches the United States today

America’s worsening water crises, from Flint to Jackson to Maui to rural Appalachia, echo pre–New Deal problems with aging pipes, failing sewer systems, unsafe wells and underfunded utilities.

The New Deal’s lessons still apply:

• National coordination matters.

Water is a national public good, not a local afterthought.

• Public credit unlocks public health.

The New Deal solved capital scarcity with federal financing, something the U.S. needs again through large-scale national investment banks or expanded State Revolving Funds (SRFs).

• Labor is the backbone of sanitation.

The work is skilled, essential and dangerous. A new wave of union apprenticeships and operator training is needed.

• A nation requires geographically structural investment.

Poor communities suffer first and worst when systems fail. Only coordinated national programs can correct these inequalities.

Public Credit and Coordinated Policy: What U.S. Reform Requires

A modern water strategy would begin with federal public credit, modeled on institutions like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, to allow states and municipalities to rebuild systems without saddling low-income communities with unaffordable rates. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expanded water funding but federal assessments still show a multibillion-dollar annual investment gap.

State governments should coordinate regional water planning. Rivers, aquifers and stormwater do not follow municipal borders. Counties and municipalities need stable support to remove lead pipes, modernize treatment facilities and expand stormwater resilience. National standards must be enforced, but with the financial capacity to meet them.

A renewed focus on the workforce is equally essential. The water sector faces a serious retirement wave. Without new apprenticeships, union partnerships and technical training, communities will lack the skilled workers needed to keep systems safe. Organized labor improves safety, retention and accountability and remains one of the most effective tools for preventing the kind of neglect that leads to contamination crises.

Technology can strengthen resilience with advanced treatment, water reuse, leak detection and decentralized systems, but only within a public framework that ensures oversight and trust. Innovation cannot substitute for the basic work of investing, maintaining and staffing the system.

The guiding principle should remain simple: water is a public good. A society that leaves water safety to the luck of geography or income undermines its own stability.

The stakes are not abstract. When water systems fail, people get sick, cities falter and economic life slows. When workers are ignored, safety erodes and crises spread. When governments underfund essential infrastructure, the cost of eventual failure multiplies.

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So with all of that outlined above, I still want to give thanks for what was given to us by those who built our public works, even if the system is on life support, propped up with water sanitation labor working around the clock.

But we need to get to work and rebuild this system. The best time would have been 50 years ago. The next best time is today.

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