Troubled Water explores the complexities of the US water crisis and considers possible solutions

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - A new Gray Television primetime special, “Troubled Water,” hosted by chief political analyst Greta Van Susteren, examines the impact of climate change on the U.S. water supply, shines a light on communities that lack access to clean drinking water, and explores possible solutions.

The hour-long program will air on Gray TV stations around the country throughout the month of April. Please check local listings for air dates and times.

Investigative reporter Morgan Loew of KTVK/KPHO-TV in Phoenix contributed a story on farmers experiencing water cuts as semiconductor plants expand across Arizona, and investigative reporter C.J. LeMaster of WLBT-TV reported on infrastructure issues and water contamination in Jackson, Mississippi.

Greta Van Susteren traveled to the largest reservoir in the United States, Lake Mead on the Arizona/Nevada border, where water levels have reached historic lows. She spoke to Amelia Flores, the chairwoman of the Colorado Indian River Tribes (CRIT), CRIT Farms Manager Josh Moore, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager John Entsmingerdr, and Dr. Kristen Averyt, Nevada’s first senior climate advisor, about the impact on the more than 25 million people who depend on water from the reservoir for drinking, irrigation, and power.

In Washington, Van Susteren interviewed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is overseeing funding from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, about the impact of extreme weather, water shortages, exposure to polluted water, and what can be done.

“I would definitely say we have water problems in this country,” said Buttigieg. “America has got to get ahead of these issues.”

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to describe this as reaching a crisis level,” continued the Secretary of Transportation. “Sometimes it’s not enough water. Sometimes it’s too much water. Sometimes it’s water not where it’s supposed to be. But all of those combined are hell on our infrastructure.”

In terms of the ongoing drought out West, Buttigieg said, “We’ve got to make sure as a matter of fairness, as a matter of economic strength, and just as a matter of common sense, to manage water in a way that recognizes that there may be less of it to go around in a lot of parts of the country over the next few years.”

When asked whether there were still cases of lead contamination in American drinking water, Buttigieg answered: “There’s probably more shoes to drop. I will say there’s a lot of testing that goes on through federal, state, and local standards to try to identify these issues. But we continue to read headlines about another community that’s got issues. And by the way, lead exposure runs deep in this country.”

EPA Administrator Regan told Van Susteren that low-income communities and communities of color, like Jackson, Mississippi and Lowndes County, Alabama have been “bearing the brunt” of the lack of investment in infrastructure and exposure to polluted water. “We know that systemic racism, lack of interest in low-income communities, lack of political representation, have contributed to the disproportionate impact of Black and Brown in low-income communities being exposed to a lack of access to good quality drinking water,” said Regan.

According to Regan, the Biden administration is working to get resources from the $15 billion allocated in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to replace lead service lines to states in need by this fall. “There is absolutely no question that the communities have lost trust in their state, local and federal governments. We’re working very hard to rebuild that trust,” he said.

Secretary Buttigieg and Administrator Regan interview excerpts are below.

Secretary Pete Buttigieg Highlights

Greta Van Susteren

Do you think we have a water crisis in this country? Would you go so far?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

I would definitely say we have water problems in this country. One pattern I noticed when I sat on the Mayors Water Council as a mayor was it felt like there were three kinds of communities. There were the mayors who didn’t have enough water, mostly from the west, the mayors who had too much water, often in the Midwest. And then many who had water in all the wrong places like Miami, where you got the sea level rise.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

The future’s not going to look like the past and we cannot plan for the rest of the 21st century using the strategies or the assumptions that we had in the 20th or even the 19th. America has got to get ahead of these issues. Another thing that we’re doing in our department is what are called protect grants. They’re to help communities build more resilient infrastructure. Here’s an example of where water and roads interact. Roads are getting washed out more and more because a 500-year flood is turning into an annual event.

Greta Van Susteren

Or extreme weather where it freezes.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Absolutely. And that destroys roadways. Take it from a Midwesterner.

Greta Van Susteren

I’m a Midwesterner too.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Right, so you know how it is, that freeze-thaw cycle. And these admittedly not very flashy topics, are hugely important for taxpayers, for commuters, for the ability to maintain the infrastructure that we need. So, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to describe this as reaching a crisis level. As you and I sit down,

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

And again, sometimes it’s not enough water. Sometimes it’s too much water. Sometimes it’s water not where it’s supposed to be. But all of those combined are hell on our infrastructure.

Greta Van Susteren

Tell me, what does the Department of Transportation have to do with our water supply or water system? Because I know that the EPA has one job or one-part responsibility. What does the Department of Transportation have?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Well, we’re in the infrastructure business overall and we focus on of course transportation infrastructure. But one of the things that I’m trying to do with my cabinet colleagues is make sure that we’re all working together whenever transportation issues and water issues come up at the same time. When I was mayor, for example, one of the biggest streetscape projects going on in the city was actually a sewer project. It was just that in order to tear up that whole street to get the sewer redone, the city realized you might as well reimagine the streets at the same time. We need to learn to think about things across the different silos of the federal government because housing, transportation, internet connections, pipes, they all fit together.

Greta Van Susteren

In fact, you mentioned when you were mayor of South Bend in 2011, I think it was cited by the EPA for having a sewer problem. And then you had to come up with a solution.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

That’s right. Yeah. My predecessor signed a consent decree with the EPA that committed the city to about a billion dollars in repairs, which was really in many ways almost impossible, but there was no choice. So what we had to do was figure out ways to get it done using more innovative approaches that didn’t cost that much, but still got the environmental benefit. And cities across the country are dealing with this.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

One of the reasons I’m excited about this infrastructure bill is that it’s going to help cities and towns in a way that I would’ve loved back when I was a mayor. In fact, a lot of times when I’m talking to my international counterparts, they are ministers of transportation and water or infrastructure and water, they have a title like that, because there’s an understanding of how it all fits together. And when I talk to my colleagues at the EPA, the core of engineers, other parts of the federal government that help with water, I just love the fact that we’re supporting cities in a way that didn’t happen as much in the past.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

A drop of water doesn’t know what state it’s in and we’ve got to be better I think as a country managing these very limited resources, because what happens to a drop of water in the middle of the run of the Colorado River could impact something two states away or could have a huge impact in Indian country, in communities that weren’t a party to some of these agreements between states about who gets what water when.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

We’ve got to make sure as a matter of fairness, as a matter of economic strength and just as a matter of common sense to manage water in a way that recognizes that there may be less of it to go around in a lot of parts of the country over the next few years.

Greta Van Susteren

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, what does that do to help you implement the things you need to do to handle the water issues in this country?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Well, the bipartisan infrastructure bill has a huge amount of funding to help communities with their water infrastructure issues. A lot of it is just quality, getting lead out of pipes. The more we learn about lead-

Greta Van Susteren

Is that you or is that the state and local government? Who’s responsible for getting the lead out of the pipes?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

The state and local government have kind of been left on their own. Now, through these dollars, they’re going to get help through the federal government. Not me in my department. Most of this will be through the EPA. But I’ll be looking on with a lot of interest because it’s so important to get this right. There is no safe level of lead in drinking water for a child.

Greta Van Susteren

We know, I mean, we’ve seen the stories about Flint, Michigan. Do we know all the areas in the country which have lead problems, lead in the pipe? My biggest fear is that we just haven’t looked some places, that there probably some places where there’s a lot of lead in the water for instance, and the pipes are leaking, but we just haven’t noticed it yet.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

There’s probably more shoes to drop. I will say there’s a lot of testing that goes on through federal, state and local standards to try to identify these issues. But we continue to read headlines about another community that’s got issues. And by the way, lead exposure runs deep in this country. I was one of the many people shaking my head at those stories from Flint only to discover my own community of South Bend had very disturbing levels of lead in children’s blood. Not because of the water, the water was fine. I was sure of that as mayor running the water utility, but because of paint in houses.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

And there are so many different things in the environment that can be a threat to children. The things I focus on as transportation secretary are the emissions that go into the air, heavy metals, particulate matter. And you can see it in the numbers, direct correlations between living near a busy highway or a busy port and things like asthma affecting children. So this is really a fairness and justice issue too. And it’s one more reason why more electric vehicles, cleaner equipment at our ports on our highways is going to make a difference, not just in climate change globally, but in public health locally.

Greta Van Susteren

In terms of the infrastructure bill, how do you decide who gets what? You’ve got a limited amount of resources and you might have a community that has problems, but you have another community that has problems and you have a limited amount of resources to fix these problems.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

That’s exactly right. Even with these big numbers, they are limited, and we’re going to have to be very smart about ensuring that they’re used effectively. So there’s basically two ways that a dollar can go out. One is that people come to us with projects and our department uses the criteria we’ve laid out, how will this create jobs? How will this improve safety? Is it equitable? Does it make sense for the climate? And based on that, we’re going to pick the best projects and we’re going to fund them. That’s actually the minority of the dollars. More of them will go out through partnerships where we team up with a state or another department and they make the decisions about what to do.

Greta Van Susteren

But do they put money in this?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Often, yeah, sometimes-

Greta Van Susteren

Do they have the money? Do they have the money?

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Often there’s a state, federal match, but the honest answer is sometimes they don’t. So for example, we found that a lot of communities that needed help with their bridges, and there’s thousands and thousands of bridges in this country in poor condition, a lot of those communities, even though they could qualify for an 80/20 match, in other words, we’d do 80% of the funding if they could just put up 20%, they still couldn’t afford to do it.

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

So in this bill, for these so-called off-system bridges, that might sound small but they make all the difference in the world in a rural community, we’re going to cover a hundred percent of it because we saw that that was a barrier. That’s what I mean when I talk about these partnerships, trying to make sure the federal government is more user friendly to communities that are trying to navigate our processes because I know what it’s like to be a mayor knocking on the door of literally this building that I work in now trying to get help. And it’s not always been the easiest thing for communities to navigate, especially rural communities, lower income communities, the very ones that we need to go out of our way to help.

Michael Regan Highlights

Greta Van Susteren

It’s so unthinkable that this country wouldn’t have clean water. I mean, we read about other communities like Flint is another one that’s got a lot of attention, but I read there’s raw sewage that was leaking into the drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi.

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

We’ve seen that all across the country. I was just in Lowndes County, Alabama, as well, where I actually saw straight piping of sewage from a home into the very yards that children are playing. When I was in Jackson, Mississippi, I was scheduled to do a speech for some elementary school children, and I pulled up to the building only to find out that all of the children had been evacuated because there was low water pressure. I saw lined along the sidewalk, porta-potty after porta-potty. After talking with the principal, she let me know that number one, the low water pressure and water quality issues, is nearly a daily and weekly occurrence. So the students at this elementary school actually use those porta-potties every day. To think that students don’t have access to good quality drinking water, nor water to wash their hands during a pandemic is something that no parents should ever have to experience, let alone our children.

Greta Van Susteren

Is it an economic and racial issue? Let’s talk about Jackson, Mississippi, 25% of the people in that city live under the poverty level or below .. the national level is 11%. So 25% is pretty high. It is a predominantly African American city? I think about 82% of the people there are African American, and it is one of the worst places in the country for drinking water. Is this an economic racial issue in some ways?

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

It is. I think that when we look at Jackson, Mississippi, when we look at Lowndes County Alabama, when we look all across this country, disproportionately, low income and communities of color are the communities that are bearing the brunt of these lack of investments and these exposures to pollution. So we know that systemic racism, lack of interest in low-income communities, lack of political representation have contributed to the disproportionate impact of Black and Brown in low-income communities being exposed to a lack of access to good quality drinking water. We’ve seen that first hand.

Greta Van Susteren

What other communities have you seen that are suffering from this?

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

Jackson, Mississippi, was just the tip of the spear. We toured St. James and St. John parishes in Louisiana. We rounded out that trip in Houston, Texas, and most recently I was in Lowndes County, Alabama, but I’ve also been in Chicago, and Detroit, and Wisconsin. When we think about the lead exposure in this country, the lead pipes that are still in place, that are somewhere between 6 and 10 million lead service lines in this country, it’s really unfortunate that so many of our communities don’t have quality infrastructure, but are also disproportionately exposed to things like lead poisoning. We know that children’s exposure to lead puts them at a competitive disadvantage in terms of learning, which hampers their ability to be productive citizens.

Greta Van Susteren

When is that going to be fixed? What’s the timeline?

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

Thanks to the president’s leadership and its Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We have about $15 billion dedicated to replacing these lead service lines. Luckily for us, there are some cities that are out in front of the curve, like Newark, New Jersey, who have already put programs in place and have already replaced their lead service lines. But there are so many more like Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, we’re going to work on getting these resources into the hands of these states by this fall, and by this fall, the states will then use their discretion to distribute these resources to begin these projects.

Greta Van Susteren

I imagine all the people, and I point out Jackson, Mississippi, they’ve been under a consent decree since 2012 with the EPA to do things, and obviously that predates you considerably. But so nothing really was done if we’re still coming up to the present time and they continue to have horrible problems. So, I can imagine that they’re incredibly discouraged. I mean, how can you have confidence in the government of 2012, it looked like things would get fixed because their feet were put to the fire in the community, yet it wasn’t?

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

There is absolutely no question that the communities have lost trust in their state, local and federal governments. We’re working very hard to rebuild that trust. In Jackson in particular, yes, there is a consent order in place, but since we’ve been in office, we are working to provide technical assistance so that they can begin to solve some of these problems. We’re also providing technical assistance to the community so that they can effectively apply for these grants. One of the interesting pieces of The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law resources is these resources are available with zero to no-interest loans and/or non-matching grants. This allows communities to be at the table that have never been at the table before, because they’re not having to bring the matching dollars.

Greta Van Susteren

If I lived in Flint, Michigan, and I had terrible water for all those years … I’d be sort of apprehensive, with the government coming in and saying, “Okay, it’s fixed now.”

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

This has to be very transparent. The first thing we do by traveling to these communities, number one is acknowledging that they have not been served effectively by their state, local, or federal government.

We’re telling them that we see them, we hear them, and then we want to engage with them on many of the solutions that they’ve been advocating for decades.

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

This is something that this administration has taken very seriously and thanks to The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we have $50 billion to ensure that it’s being done correctly.

Greta Van Susteren

Is that enough?

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

It’s a start. It’s a significant shot in the arm, and it’s going to really take the efforts of the federal government and public-private partnerships to begin to invest in our crumbling infrastructure. It is a great shot in the arm, and we believe with private dollars associated with it, that we can see tremendous progress.

Greta Van Susteren

I suppose there must be also a messaging campaign because if I lived in Flint, Michigan, and I had terrible water for all those years and nobody ever told me my children are drinking water with lead poisoning, I’d be sort of apprehensive, when the government coming in and saying, “Okay, it’s fixed now.”

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

Absolutely. They have to be involved in the process. This has to be very transparent.

Michael Regan, EPA Administrator

These solutions don’t come from the top down. These solutions come from the bottom up. What should come from the top down now are the resources, and that’s what we’re prepared to do. We’re prepared to match these federal resources with local solutions so that we can get these problems solved as quickly as possible, and by the way, we’re trying to build trust along the way.

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