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Study identifies US hotspots for drinking water quality violations and lack of access to safe, clean water

About two million people in the United States lack access to running water or indoor plumbing in their homes. Another 30 million people live where drinking water systems violate safety rules.

Water privatization—the transfer of public water systems ownership and/or management to private companies—has been proposed as a potential solution to provide more Americans with safe, clean drinking water. But opponents argue that private companies may prioritize profits over public needs.

To investigate how private vs. public water systems affect water quality and equal access to safe, clean water, researchers mapped the distribution of water system ownership, water system violations, and water injustice nationwide. Their findings are published in the journal Risk Analysis.

The study is the first to integrate geospatial mapping of water violations, social vulnerability, and, importantly, perceptions of water access in relation to public versus private ownership of water systems on a national scale.

"Policymakers can use our findings to identify and prioritize enforcement efforts in hotspots, make improvements in infrastructure, and implement policies that ensure affordable and safe drinking water—particularly for socially vulnerable communities," says lead author Alex Segrè Cohen, assistant professor of science and risk communication at the University of Oregon.

"We found that violations and risks of water injustice tend to cluster in specific areas or hotspots across the country."

Here are some of the key findings:

• The top 10 counties with the highest ranking for water violations were in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.
• The highest number of violations reported by a single water system was a public system owned by a local government in Wyoming County, West Virginia.
• The top 10 counties with the highest ranking for water injustice were in Mississippi (8 out of the 10), South Dakota, and Texas.
• Hotspots of water injustice were more often located in areas with lower private system ownership. (This suggests that public water systems are not necessarily better at preventing violations, according to the authors).
• Living in a county with both high water injustice and a higher proportion of privatized water systems was associated with a greater concern or perception of vulnerability around water access and security—with concerns about water accessibility, safety, and reliability.

Water system violations include failures to comply with regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act, including health-based violations such as exceeding maximum levels of contaminants, non-compliance with mandated water treatment techniques, and failure to follow monitoring schedules and communicate required information to customers.

The researchers define water injustice as the unequal access to safe and clean drinking water that disproportionately impacts low-income households and people of color.

They devised a county-level score based on the performance of local drinking water systems (based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) and community social vulnerability (using the U.S. Center for Disease Control's (CDC's) Environmental Justice Index).

These data were merged with a nationally representative survey of U.S. residents (collected in 2019) that measured how people rated their access to drinking water and the quality and reliability of water systems in their area, among other water injustice indicators.

"Our results suggest that privatization alone is not a solution," says Segrè Cohen. "The local context, such as regulatory enforcement, community vulnerability, and community priorities, matters in determining outcomes."