about 1.1 percent of its income on water and sewage. By 2018, 87% of the American population receives water from publicly owned water companies. History In the 19th century numerous American cities were afflicted with major outbreaks of disease, including cholera in 1832, 1849 and 1866 and typhoid in 1848. The fast-growing cities did not have sewers and relied on contaminated wells within the city confines for drinking water supply. In the mid-19th century many cities built centralized water supply systems. However, initially these systems provided raw river water without any treatment. Only after John Snow established the link between contaminated water and disease in 1854 and after authorities became gradually convinced of that link, water treatment plants were added and public health improved. Sewers were built since the 1850s, initially based on the erroneous belief that bad air (miasma theory) caused cholera and typhoid. It took until the 1890s for the now universally accepted germ theory of disease to prevail. However, most wastewater was still discharged without any treatment, because wastewater was not believed to be harmful to receiving waters due to the natural dilution and self-purifying capacity of rivers, lakes and the sea. Wastewater treatment only became widespread after the introduction of federal funding in 1948 and especially after an increase in environmental consciousness and the upscaling of financing in the 1970s. From 1948 to 1987 federal funding for sanitation was provided through grants to local governments. Congress amended the CWA in 1987 and changed the funding system for sewage treatment to loans through revolving funds. Congress added a state revolving fund for drinking water utilities to the SDWA in 1996. Piped water supply until 1948 In the 1840s and 1850s the largest cities in the U.S. built pipelines to supply drinking water from rivers or lakes. However, the drinking water was initially not treated, since the link between waterborne pathogens and diseases was not yet well known. In 1842 New York City was one of the first cities in the U.S. to tap water resources outside the city limits. It dammed the Croton River in Westchester County, New York, and built an aqueduct from the reservoir to the city. Also in 1842, construction was completed on Chicago's first water works, with water mains made of cedar and a water intake located about into Lake Michigan. In 1848, Boston began construction of a water transmission system. A tributary