Imagine a gourmet restaurant where wonderful food is expertly pre-pared by skilled chefs in a spotless kitchen. Then consider an unlikely scenario where the same food is then served from gleaming pots and pans on to chipped crockery and corroded utensils. Unlikely? Perhaps. But this scenario could be applied to our drinking water distribution infrastructure.

Not only are many water pipes and sewers badly in need of repair or renewal, but their leakage rate is quite astounding to laymen. An Environment Canada Survey estimates that unaccounted for water losses range from a low of 10 percent to a high of 35 percent. This water, now treated to very high regulatory standards, has been known to leak from pipes which are often several decades old. Some of the leaked potable water may then penetrate equally leaky sanitary sewer pipes.

The insane result is that water which has been expensively treated to potable standards, may make its way to the sewage treatment plant where it has to be treated once more ­ this time as sewage ­ before discharge into the same water body the water originally was drawn from.

This corruption of potable water is at once a macabre duplication and distortion of nature's own hydrological cycle which has purified water and air since our planet cooled and life forms emerged. It also makes a mockery of the term recycling. Then too, leaking sewer pipe discharges may penetrate groundwater supplies and contaminate well water.

While potholes in roads cause public outrage and immediate political action, equally neglected water and sewer pipes are out of sight and therefore, out of the public's mind. If the public could see what lies beneath the potholes, they would demand remedial action.

Ultimately, reducing leakage could also save large amounts of money. One Canadian municipality with unaccounted for water losses of only 12 percent, saved almost $1 million per year using PRVs (pressure reducing valves). The PRVs ensured fire-fighting safety ­ while enabling overall nocturnal pressures to be substantially reduced, so reducing leakages.

In an analysis of Canada's water and wastewater system, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, noted that Canada's water and wastewater infrastructure services are among the best in the world. Public health planning, coupled with the growth of municipal services has resulted in a high quality water and wastewater infrastructure system in most parts of the country, the report said, but it left no room for complacency. It stressed that the lack of user pay systems in many regions and municipalities across the country discourages conservation of water resources.

"As a result, there is a large unmet need to maintain and refurbish existing water and wastewater infrastructure, particularly sewage capital stock. By ignoring this need for the last 15 to 20 years, governments have exacerbated the situation since repair bills rise exponentially over time. Estimates of unmet water and wastewater infrastructure needs range from $38 to $49 billion. This is the capital needed to ensure that existing capital stock and services are maintained," the Round Table said.

But in one recent Canadian water utilities survey, 75 percent reported an annual pipe replacement program of less than one percent of their total systems. This represents a replacement cycle of in excess of one hundred years, so pipe systems put in before the Wright Brothers took off might be due for renewal around AD 2003.

The most cost-effective long-term way to ensure the integrity of our water is to embark on massive inspection and restoration of those decrepid water and sewerage systems which are older than the humans they serve. While this will probably protect health more cost-effectively than many preventative medical programs, it will also provide tens of thousands of skilled, highly paid jobs in engineering, construction and manufacturing. Such infrastructure rehabilitation will be good for our economy, our health and the environment.

Like the Round Table, Health Canada also states that, in most cases, Canadians enjoy reasonably high-quality tap water. I would like to stress that we pay less for our high-quality drinking water than almost any other country in the world. Japanese drinking water, for example, can cost four times as much as we pay in Canada and many European countries have water bills that are double, even triple, what Canadians pay.

By developing drinking water and sewerage systems in past decades, environmental scientists and engineers, it should be noted, have done more to reduce disease and deaths ­ especially in infants ­ than the medical profession.

There can be no more effective way to continue this exemplary record, than by a massive inspection and rehabilitation of our water and sewer infrastructure.