America’s Water Crisis: Why Municipal Water Managers Need Smarter Fixes Now

Sponsored By Oldcastle Infrastructure | Smarter Tools, Safer Systems: America's Aging Water Systems

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Summary

America’s water systems are facing a perfect storm: aging infrastructure, escalating repair costs, overdrawn water sources, and a rapidly retiring workforce are converging to create a nationwide crisis. With over 700 water main breaks each day and $625 billion needed over the next two decades to restore crumbling systems, traditional break-and-fix approaches are proving inefficient, costly, and unsustainable.

In this article, Keaton Clay, water asset consultant at Oldcastle Infrastructure, explores how municipalities can rise to the challenge by adopting cutting-edge, AI-powered solutions like CivilSense™. With 93% accuracy in leak detection, predictive analytics, and multi-source data integration, CivilSense™ allows cities to transition from reactive maintenance to proactive, cost-effective infrastructure management.

As cities like Houston struggle with ballooning repair budgets, this article makes the case that smart technologies are not just a luxury—they’re a necessity for ensuring clean, reliable, and resilient water systems for future generations.

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Across the U.S., a growing number of communities are facing a silent crisis: water scarcity driven by failing infrastructure. For one thing, the fresh-water system is old. Much of its two-million-mile network of pipes was built shortly after World War II, and it’s not aging very well. Every day more than 700 water mains break, contributing to the daily loss of six billion gallons of processed water. Over the next 20 years, the nationwide price tag for fixing the network is estimated to be about $625 billion.

And it will be painful. For example, in the city of Houston, where the annual city budget is about $5 billion, the cost to repair its water system would be about three times that.

Not only is the infrastructure aging, but so are the skilled people who manage it. Within 10 years, a third of the municipal water workforce will reach retirement age, thus draining their communities of the skills and expertise needed to deal with the crisis.

What’s more, there are limits to the availability of water from traditional sources. Rivers and underground aquifers are being overdrawn. Local restrictions on usage are insufficient to compensate for the losses caused by leaks. For many communities, the problem comes in a double dose: not only do the failing pipes and subsequent leaks cost money to replace, but spending these replacement funds prevents many communities from investing in essential repairs and upgrades.

For today’s municipal water managers, the challenges are many. Here are three realities that must be addressed: 

Old solutions are no longer sufficient amidst America's water crisis

What’s clear is that old-fashioned routines of system maintenance are no longer sufficient. For decades the strategy has been to wait for a pipe to break or a leak to appear on the ground above before undertaking repairs. Some cities have tried to predict vulnerable locations based on the age of particular pipes and their history of failure, but even well-informed guesswork remains unreliable and is only accurate in around one in every three attempts. 

The sequence of leak detection has remained predictably discouraging. Once surface water is spotted, crews must often play detective — digging without knowing where the break actually lies. It would be convenient if that surface water indicated the exact site of a break in the pipes, but it seldom does. The actual break may be hundreds of feet away from the surface evidence. 

With any luck, a crew using traditional tools like shovels and backhoes finds and repairs the pipes and goes on to the next leak. The hit-or-miss process is frustratingly inefficient and unavoidably expensive. In the worst cases, the very process of fixing the leaks causes other problems. Neighbourhoods find themselves inconvenienced without drinking water. Streets and homes are damaged. Hospitals in those neighbourhoods are especially vulnerable to water-flow disruptions.

If the task is to cost-effectively provide clean water to local consumers, the system is a failure. It costs too much, is expensive to operate, and currently, nearly impossible to maintain in full working order.

New technologies drive today’s smart water management

Fortunately, the story doesn’t have to end here without a viable or affordable solution. New technologies have been developed to shift the process from blindly reacting to imprecise evidence of leaks to proactively identifying the exact source with near-perfect accuracy. It is the precision of technologies like Oldcastle Infrastructure’s CivilSense™—which uses predictive AI, real-time leak detection, and expert support—to help prevent line break risks, reduce non-revenue water, and optimize repair investments. 

This new technology goes far beyond any other predictive modeling solution currently available.  In addition to break history, data identified by CivilSense™ AI includes information such as pipe type, pipe diameter, install date, topographical data, weather patterns, and historical soil conditions. A utility’s hydraulic model and pressure zones are also identified.

Here's how it works. Using system data and data from previous failures, an AI uses machine learning to identify high-risk pipes and zones within the network. Team members then deploy acoustic sensors strategically throughout the selected zones. AI then analyzes the acoustic data to detect, pinpoint and assess the size of leaks in the system. Based on that output, a municipal team can make decisions about prospective repairs based on leak severity, size, and exact location with a market-leading accuracy rate of 93%. What’s more, the sensors serve as monitors of the zone long after the repairs are made, to validate success and identify any additional leaks that might have been hidden by other, larger leaks. Guesswork is giving way to computers and Artificial Intelligence.

The advantages of new technologies will enable water managers to fix leaks with speed and efficiency, monitor hot spots, and, for the first time, assess risks of failures within the system with increasing accuracy and move proactively toward prevention before the actual damage is done.

Local government officials can agree that asset management — a broad term encompassing the creation, upkeep, and improvement of a community’s infrastructure — is a challenging task. Modern solutions driven by AI allow for efficient and effective approaches to today’s water management challenges. 

Cost-saving solutions can benefit every community

If the new technologies like CivilSense™ were there only to facilitate repairs to existing breaks, it would still be a big step forward. But the outcome is better than that. By reducing the cost of repairs in the system, the community can make repairs and operations less expensive and therefore increase the capital spending elsewhere in the system or out in the community, a return-on-investment that any community, fiscally constrained or not, can celebrate. 

The cost of delaying leak repairs can rapidly increase if a break leads to an emergency situation. Dollars saved by proactively fixing leaks are also dollars saved in emergency management, freeing funds to be used to improve the system and the community.  

Gathering data is a valuable first step, but its real value is the action the data can stimulate. By making part of the system more efficient, technology can add further benefit by helping to finance improvements and operations in other water-related functions, especially processing drinking water. In most U.S. cities, the water lost to leaks represents a double-digit percentage of the water produced. Reduce the leakage, and the savings can help support the upkeep of the entire system or the development of alternative water sources.

Cities struggling with funding capital improvements must develop cost-saving ways to operate and maintain their water infrastructure. Failing to do so will put more pressure on city budgets and further limit economic growth. The new technologies already in service are also an important part of learning how to operate and improve in the present while recruiting, training, and retaining the next-generation workforce.

The water crisis isn't just looming, it’s already here. Cities cannot continue to waste such a valuable asset as water. New technologies can assist the planning for a sustainable future by using resources efficiently and maintaining infrastructure wisely. The goals should be to control costs through more efficient monitoring and projecting of failures, reduce the impact on the community when failures do occur, and minimize health risks by providing the cleanest drinking water possible.

New technologies producing data that lead to effective action will elevate a community’s stewardship of its most valuable resource — water — and solve an expensive problem efficiently.

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This article is sponsored content in collaboration with Oldcastle Infrastructure and is published by The SustainabilityX® Magazine—an award-winning, female-founded and female-led digital nonprofit platform that has been advancing sustainability and driving impact through bold dialogue since 2016. We are committed to transforming the environment and economy for a sustainable future through the power of women’s leadership. As an independent publication dedicated to high-impact storytelling, we rely on the support of our community and mission-aligned partners to continue our work. Please note: we do not share your personal information with advertisers, and our editorial content remains fully independent of financial contributors.

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About Keaton Clay

Keaton Clay is a water asset consultant at Oldcastle Infrastructure. He holds certifications from the AWWA in Controlling Non-Revenue Water in Water Utilities and sits on the GAWP Water Loss Committee.

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About CivilSense™

Oldcastle Infrastructure’s CivilSense™ is an advanced water infrastructure management platform that leverages artificial intelligence, acoustic sensing, and real-time data to proactively detect and address leaks before they escalate into emergencies. With a market-leading accuracy rate of 93%, CivilSense™ enables municipalities to transition from reactive maintenance to strategic, data-driven asset management, effectively reducing water loss and associated costs. By integrating multi-source data—including GIS, infrastructure, and climate insights—CivilSense™ identifies high-risk pipeline segments, allowing for targeted interventions that enhance the resilience and sustainability of water systems. This innovative solution empowers communities to safeguard their water resources, minimize service disruptions, and optimize infrastructure investments.

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About OldCastle Infrastructure

Oldcastle Infrastructure, a CRH company, is a leading provider of engineered building solutions across North America. With nearly 80 manufacturing facilities and a workforce of over 4,000 employees, the company delivers a comprehensive portfolio of more than 16,000 products, including precast concrete, polymer concrete, and plastic components. These solutions serve critical sectors such as water, energy, communications, and transportation, supporting the development and maintenance of essential infrastructure.

Committed to sustainability and innovation, Oldcastle Infrastructure aligns its operations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on responsible consumption, climate action, and the advancement of sustainable communities. As part of CRH plc, one of the world's largest building materials companies, Oldcastle Infrastructure combines global resources with local expertise to deliver reliable, high-quality solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern infrastructure projects.

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About The SustainabilityX® Magazine

The SustainabilityX® Magazine is an award-winning, digital, female-founded, and female-led non-profit initiative bringing the environment and economy together for a sustainable future through dialogue, and now transforming the environment and economy for a sustainable future through the power of women's leadership. Founded on May 8, 2016, and inspired by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals by Canada's Top 30 Under 30 in Sustainability Leadership awardee, Supriya Verma, the digital media initiative focuses on approaching the world's most pressing challenges with a holistic, integrated, systems-based perspective as opposed to the traditional and ineffective siloed approach with a single lens on interdisciplinary topics like climate and energy. This initiative ultimately seeks to explore how to effectively bring the environment and economy together through intellectual, insightful dialogue and thought-provoking discussion amongst individuals across sectors taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to untangling the intricate web of sustainability while championing women's leadership in sustainability.

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