Brett Walton wrote a smart piece about the relationship between poverty, income inequality, and decaying US water infrastructure:

Affordable water requires an all-in effort that cuts across the political spectrum, a mix of redirected spending priorities, tax policy, social programs, and engineering assessments at the local, state, and federal levels. The urgency, experts assert, will grow, as water systems enter the Replacement Era — to use American Water Works Association’s phrase — while a high-tech economy widens the distance between the well-compensated haves and the struggling have-nots.