Start raiding your piggy banks for clean water. A recent article in the Washington Post estimated that it will cost $28 billion to clean up the Chesapeake Bay - of that $6 billion is needed to repair and upgrade sewage treatment plants. Nationally we have a funding gap of $390 billion over the next 20 years to cover the country's wastewater infrastructure funding needs. Without this increased investment water quality is at risk of returning to mid-1970s pollution levels. Much of our wastewater infrastructure is suffering from neglect as it reaches the end of its natural life cycle - it has gotten so bad that the American Society of Civil Engineers has rated our wastewater systems with a D- grade.

Meanwhile, the federal government has cut the federal funds available through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (SRF) from 1.35 billion five years ago to a proposed $688 million in the FY07 budget. For comparison, we spent $500 million in four months to fix sewer and water infrastructure in Baghdad alone.

There is some reason for hope in reversing the federal funding decline - Rep. Oberstar (D-MN) recently introduced legislation to reauthorize the SRF at higher funding levels and the bill is on the fast track in the House, although its fate in the Senate is less clear.

Hopefully, this bill can also be revised to better attain clean water by including more incentives for communities to use "green infrastructure" such as rain gardens and buffer areas, along with the typical hard engineering fixes to get better bang for the buck. Many cities are already taking this path and using such low impact development techniques to reduce stormwater and the resulting sewer overflows, and this trend should be encouraged. SRF funds are also sometimes misused to subsidize sprawl, creating even more problems and this should be prohibited.

So, as the Beatles like to say, money can't buy me love... but surely it can buy us some sewer pipes that don't leak - and I'm all for that!