Water Sector Reform #5: Environmental Justice
Photo credit: EJCW.org
With a major federal investment in water infrastructure possibly on the horizon, the United States has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leverage that money into a structural transformation of America’s water sector. This is the last in a series of posts outlining broad proposals to reform the management, governance, and regulation of U.S. drinking water, sewer, and stormwater systems. The first proposed reform was consolidation of water utilities; the second was an overhaul of financial regulation; the third was investment in information technology; the fourth was investment in water sector human capital.
My fifth proposal is to build environmental justice into federal water regulations.
The face of drinking water in the United States.
Drinking water & environmental justice
It’s difficult to overstate just how much the Flint Water Crisis changed the national conversation on drinking water. As I’ve observed before, Flint’s water contamination wasn’t the first, or worst, or largest drinking water crisis in America in recent years, but for it’s the one that put a spotlight on water infrastructure. Last month a similar lead contamination in Newark grabbed headlines across the country again.
The lead contamination crises in Flint, Newark, and elsewhere turned the spotlight on an uncomfortable reality: America’s water systems problems are not just about infrastructure management, they’re also about institutional politics, race, ethnicity, and poverty. There’s a growing recognition that water infrastructure is an environmental justice issue. That’s expanded the political coalition interested in water infrastructure and raised the stakes in the politics of drinking water.
The color of drinking water
Anecdotes and case studies about drinking water and environmental justice abound. Looking for more rigorous evidence, David Switzer and I conducted the first nation-wide analysis of the relationships between race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance. Here’s what we found:
The red areas of the graph show high likelihood of drinking water violations, the blue areas show low likelihood. These results provide strong evidence of a systemic injustice in utilities serving low-income communities of color across the United States. In communities with higher populations of black and Hispanic individuals, SDWA health violations are more common. What’s more, race and ethnicity seem to matter most in determining drinking water quality in the poorest of communities. My analysis of public experiences with drinking water service also reveals important disparities by race and income. The racial disparities are far, far worse in Indian Country. My study with Mellie Haider and David Switzer found that Clean Water Act violations are 23% higher and SDWA violations are 59% higher on tribal facilities compared with non-tribal facilities.*
The reasons for these racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in water quality and utility service are varied and complex. In some cases it’s a familiar tale of urban de-industrialization and white flight; in others it’s a legacy of racial discrimination in housing or infrastructure development programs. Environmental injustices in drinking water aren’t just urban phenomena, either: majority-black and majority-Hispanic communities suffer from poor water quality across vast swaths of rural America—to say nothing of Indian Country.†
Unfortunately, the regulatory response to ongoing water quality problems in poor, minority communities is to loosen regulations or look past violations. Outsiders to the water sector are sometimes surprised to learn that there are no federal laws requiring racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic equity in water quality.
Environmental justice
If we are going to pour hundreds of billions of federal dollars into water infrastructure, that money must bring us closer to environmental justice. My final water sector reform proposal, then, is to build environmental justice into federal water regulations. That means, at a minimum:
- Establishing standard metrics to assess racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity in environmental conditions and infrastructure investments. I’m working on some new environmental equity metrics that I hope to put into practice soon.
- Utilities must collect and publicly report data on service shutoffs and restorations.
- Regulators must demonstrate racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity in inspections and enforcement actions.
Eligibility for all federal infrastructure funding must be contingent on utilities demonstrating equity in conditions, investment, and administration, or adequate progress toward that goal. Extra funding and technical assistance should be targeted at communities that suffer from significant disparities due to historical or structural disadvantages—most obviously tribal systems.
Together with the other systemic reforms I’ve proposed, this commitment to environmental justice can rebuild trust in America’s water systems and build a broad political coalition in support of investment in the nation’s most essential infrastructure.
*We’ve got more research on tribal water issues in the, er, pipeline.
†Environmental injustice in rural America often come as a surprise to big city folks, who often seem to think that “rural” means “white.” Racial/ethnic disparities in water quality don’t surprise anyone who’s spent time in South Texas, Northern Arizona, or Alabama’s Black Belt.
© 2019 Manny P. Teodoro