Fixing aging sewer pipes nationwide will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Meanwhile, thousands of spills occur every year.
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.
When asked about the staggering volume of sewer overflows per year, the agency representative emphasized the value and importance of this network.
“EPA estimates that our nation’s sewers are worth a total of more than $1 trillion,“ the representative said. ”The collection system of a single large municipality is an asset worth billions of dollars and that of a smaller city could cost many millions to replace.
“Ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation can add value to the original investment by maintaining the system’s capacity and extending its life. The costs of rehabilitation and other measures to correct [sanitary sewer overflows] can vary widely by community size and sewer system type.”
The United States’ wastewater pipe network is a part of the national infrastructure that has been neglected for years and suffers “chronic underinvestment,” according to the Association of State Floodplain Managers.
The country has roughly 800,000 miles of sewer pipes, according to ASCE’s 2021 report card. For perspective, the National Highway System only covers an estimated 164,000 miles, according to the Department of Transportation.
Within that sprawling web, the average age of sewer pipes is around 45 years, ASCE’s 2021 report found. But in some American cities, sewer systems date back a century or more: in the city of St. Louis, for example, some sewer lines were built in Civil War days. And parts of Philadelphia’s working sewer system date back to 1800, Municipal Sewer and Water reported in 2025.
“Wastewater treatment systems are meant to act as a barrier to disease both for public health and environment,“ Laura Underwood, director of digital water solutions for Locus Technologies, told The Epoch Times. ”If you have overflows or failures, these events can release pathogens into waterways and increase the risk of gastrointestinal illnesses, skin infections, and contamination of recreational or drinking waters.”
