America's unheralded water cleanup

Visitors to Longdale Park in urban Atlanta may enjoy the little meandering stream that winds its tree-shaded way through the park without ever a clue that it used to be a buried metal pipe. That restoration - or "daylighting" - of Longdale's rotting, subterranean conduit is a modest environmental success story. It is also part of a far broader push to restore degraded rivers and streams nationwide, an effort whose enormous scope is only now being revealed by researchers who were shocked at its size.
With little fanfare, counties, states, and the federal government have collectively spent an estimated $14 billion or more - at least $1 billion a year since 1990 - to restore rivers and streams to their natural condition, not including dollars spent on Goliath restoration projects like the Everglades. Ironically, the move to clean up America's unheralded rivers comes at a time when the condition of the nation's waterways overall is starting to deteriorate.