sinha: you have to choose the rehabilitation technique so that the life of the pipe can be extended 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. allbee: any asset has an optimal investment strategy. if you're making investments in that asset too early, or too late, you're wasting money. it costs about three times as much to fix a system once it's failed. so it's all about finding that right point where the dollars should flow toward that asset. narrator: but finding the funds to evaluate and rebuild these assets is an ongoing struggle. johnson: there is a gap between what's being spent by municipalities and water supply systems and what needs to be spent. and somehow that has to be made up. so there's a good bit of lobbying through congress to get funding. oberstar: we need to restore the construction grant program. we need to invest substantially more, on the federal government side, as an inducement to states and local governments to make the investments they need to make. man: but the federal role is going to continue to be diminished because of so many competing demands. so the expectation that t