A five-point proposal to transform the U.S. water sector

As daunting as the challenges in the U.S. water sector are, solutions are possible and within our grasp. Thanks to legions of smart, creative scientists and engineers, we know a lot about the threats to environmental quality and health, and we’re pretty good at finding ways to address them. Today the principal barriers to progress in the water sector are not environmental or technological; they are social, economic, and political.

Fixing the water sector—really fixing the water sector—means more than government money for pipes. The crazy quilt of institutions that govern, regulate, and manage water in the United States hinders effective, lasting solutions. Fortunately, institutions are human creations, which means we can do something about them. There’s nothing wrong with water governance in America that can’t be solved.

Over the past few months I’ve written a series advancing five broad institutional reforms to the U.S. water sector that ought to accompany any big federal investment.* This post summarizes them. They’re a package deal: each reform complements the others, and each is unlikely to be successful without the others. It’s an ambitious plan, but it’s rooted in empirical research, and together the five parts are technically and politically feasible. Here they are (click each heading for the full post on each):

1. Consolidation

There are more than 50,000 community water systems and 15,000 sanitary sewer systems in the United States. Virtually every aspect of America’s water sector is worse because there are so many systems. Let’s reduce the number of water systems to fewer than 5,000 by 2030. Consolidation can happen by merging neighboring systems into a regional utility, creating new authorities or nonprofit organizations, or when an investor-owned firm purchases small systems. To make it happen:

• Federal funding for water, sewer, and stormwater systems must be contingent on small system consolidation.
• Laws governing utility mergers and acquisitions should remove barriers to and create incentives for consolidation. Consolidation laws should ensure that struggling systems are consolidated and guard against “cherry-picking.”
• All systems must be held to the same environmental standards. Exemptions and waivers for small systems should be eliminated and regulators should be empowered to force condemnation and consolidation for perennially failing systems.
• State and federal agencies should provide technical and legal assistance to facilitate the consolidation process.

Reducing the number of water and sewer utilities through consolidation is the single best thing we can do to improve water utilities in the United States.

• Regulatory authorities should collect and publicly report performance metrics for each water and sewer system,
• Water, sewer, and stormwater systems must develop comprehensive asset management plans, and demonstrate that capital assets are adequately maintained.
• Public Utilities Commission pricing and service quality regulation should be extended to all utilities, not just investor-owned systems.

The great promise of the regulatory regimes pioneered in New Jersey and Wisconsin is that transparency and fairness can make buried infrastructure more visible, and so shift the political and economic incentives for sound management of water systems.

3. Technological transformation

America’s water systems need a technological leap forward with comprehensive deployment of information technology. Let’s get our systems out of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and into the 21^st and 22^nd. Funding for water, sewer, and stormwater systems should support data collection and analytical capacity for more effective and efficient investment and operations.

4. Human capital

The water sector needs a stronger supply of human capital, and we need to streamline the labor market. To that end, let’s:

• Invest in the next generation of water professionals with new and rejuvenated educational and training programs.
• Create national standards for operator licensing and certification.
• Build a body of rigorous, data-driven social science research on effective utility management, leadership, and organizations.

5. Environmental justice

Let’s build environmental justice into water, sewer, and stormwater policy. Specifically:

• Federal and state authorities must establish standard metrics to assess racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity in environmental conditions and infrastructure investments.
• Utilities must collect and publicly report data on service shutoffs and restorations, and work toward an end to shutoffs.
• Regulators must demonstrate equity in inspections and enforcement actions.
• Eligibility for federal infrastructure funds must be contingent on utilities demonstrating equity or progress toward equity.
• Channel extra funding and technical assistance to communities that suffer from significant disparities due to historical or structural disadvantages.

The way forward

Just over a year from now Americans will head to the polls for a pivotal federal election. With water on the national political agenda in a way it hasn’t been since the 1970s, we are, perhaps, an election away from a major federal investment in infrastructure, and with it an opportunity to reimagine water governance. Let’s use that opportunity do more than rebuild pipes; let’s rebuild institutions. If we do it right, those institutions will keep the pipes working for generations to come, and our legacy will be a cleaner environment and healthier, more prosperous people.

*The five-part plan debuted in a talk I gave at as part of the University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute public lecture series last summer. You can catch the whole talk here if you’re so inclined.

© 2019 Manny P. Teodoro