| Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
After years of mismanagement and a lack of adequate funding, are Michigan’s water systems on the cusp of renewal?
Six years after a panel of experts concluded that the state’s public works were in “a state of disrepair,” the quality of Michigan’s water infrastructure and the consequences of failure are no longer being ignored.
Even though the opportunity is present, beneficial outcomes are not assured nor will they be easy to achieve. What’s holding the process back is the sheer number of municipal governments in Michigan, political squabbles between jurisdictions, and a lack of data, especially for rural areas and tiny systems that serve mobile home parks, which have some of the most severe water quality challenges.
Once pipes are replaced, the next step is civic repair. Rebuilding community trust, after years of inadequate service or foul tap water, is just as difficult, perhaps more so, than the engineering work.
The challenge is immense. And playing catch-up after all these years will be costly. But this project found that the pieces of a new quilt in Michigan, one that reverses the infrastructure decline of recent decades, are starting to align.
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