From the beginning of the great environmental cleanup push in the late 1960s and 1970s, water has been a focus of nationwide capital spending even as, paradoxically, the country's clean water system has become the neglected stepchild of US infrastructure. The great bulk of water infrastructure spending in recent decades has been for water treatment and cleanup. In fact, since 1972, Congress has directly invested more than $77 billion of federal funds in the construction of publicly owned treatment works and their related facilities. State and local governments have likewise spent billions more dollars over the years-total nonfederal spending on sewer and water between 1991 and 2005 was $841 billion. Nevertheless, the physical condition of many of the nation's 16,000 wastewater treatment systems is poor because of a lack of investment in plants, equipment, and other capital improvements over the years. This lack of investment is further complicated by the complex legal issues that surround water rights and the difficult challenge of coming up with the funds to improve water in frastructure within the context of the fragmented and challenging regulatory environment.
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