"I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink," says the Lord in this Sunday's reading from the Book of Isaiah. Repairs and upgrades to the nation's aging water and sewer systems--some dating to the Civil War--have been neglected for so long that, on average, a significant water line bursts somewhere in the U.S every two minutes.

When the pipes break they damage streets and homes and allow sewage to seep into drinking water supplies. But the problem, water utility officials said, is that citizens have grown accustomed to inexpensive water delivery and sewage disposal, and that has resulted in a lack of adequate funding to maintain the systems that make those services possible.

"People pay more for their cell phones and cable television than for water," said George Hawkins, who heads the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority. "You can go a day without a phone or T.V. You can't go a day without water."

"We're relying on water systems built by our great-grandparents, and no one wants to pay for the decades we've spent ignoring them," said Jeffrey K. Griffiths, a professor at Tufts University and a member of the Environmental Protection Agency's National Drinking Water Advisory Council.

Source: Articles by Charles Duhigg for the New York Times and Andrew Nusca for SmartPlanet.com