Boil Advisory Guide
Triggers: Boil advisory

Water main breaks & pressure loss

Boil advisories are the visible symptom of an invisible problem: millions of miles of buried water pipe, much of it laid generations ago, now wearing out faster than it is being replaced.

~2.2 million mi of water mains buried beneath the U.S., much of it decades old
+27% increase in the water-main break rate from 2012 to 2018
6 billion gal of treated water lost to leaks and breaks every day

A network built for the last century

Most of America’s water system was laid in three bursts: the late 1800s, the 1920s, and the post-war boom of the 1950s and ’60s. The cast-iron and asbestos-cement pipes of those eras were built to last 75 to 100 years, and much of that lifespan is now up.

Today the U.S. has roughly 2.2 million miles of water mains. About a third are more than 50 years old, and the share of pipe that is simply beyond its useful life has doubled since 2012, from 8% to 16%.

Breaks are getting more common

This is not a steady state; it is a worsening one. A comprehensive Utah State University and AWWA survey found the water-main break rate rose 27% between 2012 and 2018, with cast-iron failures up more than 40%.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave U.S. drinking water a C- in 2025, and the system loses an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water every day through the leaks and breaks that riddle it.

The bill is coming due

Fixing this is largely a question of money and time. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law directed more than $50 billion to water systems, the largest federal water investment in history, yet estimates of the total need run far higher still.

The core difficulty is that the pipes are invisible until they fail. Utilities are increasingly turning to sensors, data modeling, and “trenchless” methods to find and replace the worst pipe before it breaks, rather than after.

What you can do

  • Look up your water system’s report card or capital plan; many utilities publish where and when they are replacing pipe.
  • Support local water-rate and bond measures that fund replacement; deferred maintenance is how the backlog built up.
  • Keep a few days of bottled water on hand, since breaks tend to happen with little warning.

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Learn more here

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