2d-governance - Manny Teodoro

Safe Drinking Water Act: The Next Fifty Years 💻

A new book aims to shape the national conversation Now available from Palgrave Macmillan In December 2024, the La Follette School at UW-Madison and the Water & Health Advisory Council gathered researchers, regulators, water sector executives, and community

Variable Flow Comes Limping After 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. Don't Blame the Victim wazn't me Congress is considering PFAS liability exemptions for water and sewer systems under

The Water-Dogecoin Paradox 💻

In an economy awash in capital, why does water want for investment? Cryptocurrencies turn code into gold, but water is the ultimate liquid asset. America’s water and sewer utilities need trillions of dollars of

PBS University Roundtable 🎦

Report Cards for Wisconsin’s Drinking Water Utilities Click image to watch video on YouTube - or look for it on PBS Wisconsin.

Variable Flow Moves the Goalposts 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. i can haz flouride? Fluoride follies Grand Rapids, Michigan began adding fluoride to its water in 1945 to

Report Card Roundup 💻

Early dispatches from the revolution It’s been a little over two months since the Wisconsin Waterworks Excellence Project (WWEP) released the first public report cards for 572 Badger State water utilities. The WWEP publishes

Toward Excellence 💻

Report cards for 570 Wisconsin water utilities strong marks for the Badger State’s capital city Back in 2019 I did something quite foolish: thinking out loud while testifying in a public hearing. When a

Variable Flow Moves Fast and Breaks Things💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. u needz bettur sooer purrmit Hooray? The US Supreme Court's handed sewer utilities a win last week in

Profits of Distrust: The Comic 📖

Healthier water makes a healthier Republic When writing The Profits of Distrust, Samantha Zuhlke, David Switzer and I wanted to craft a book that had the theoretical depth and empirical rigor of an academic

Variable Flow Shifts the Blame 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. maybee you haz teh led pipez? It’s been a minute, I know. Water comms: moar science! Regular readers

Variable Flow Rearranges the Deck Chairs 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. Battle of Helm’s Deep-PFAS liability edition Let the suits commence When EPA announced their proposed Maximum Contaminant Limit (MCL)

Women, Wages, and Bottled Water 💻

The gendered relationship between income and bottled water consumption Bottled water was something of a novelty in the U.S. back in the 1990s when I started working in the water sector. It was perceived

Variable Flow is Shocked. Shocked! 💻

Sometimes there’s a little to say about a lot of things. Welcome back to Variable Flow. i can haz clean river? Tribal ripple effects Since the late 1980s, tribal governments in the United States have

Profits of Distrust at Seminary Co-op Bookstore 🎦

A conversation with Sabina Shaikh, University of Chicago The burgeoning bottled water industry presents a paradox: Why do people choose expensive, environmentally destructive bottled water, rather than cheaper, sustainable, and more rigorously regulated tap

Broken politics, broken pipes 💻

Sustainable solutions for Jackson, Mississippi not a sustainable solution National attention is back on drinking water utilities, and once again for all the wrong reasons. As readers of this blog surely know by now,

The Profits of Distrust 📖

Citizen-Consumers, Drinking Water, and the Crisis of Confidence in American Government Cambridge University Press, 2022 The choices people make about drinking water reveal deeper lessons about trust in government and civic life. The burgeoning

Defensive Spending 💻

The first pillar of affordability is Quality Gotta count the bottles and the bills So long as water and sewer services operate on a fee-for-service basis, ensuring that these critical services are affordable will

Frame Game 2: Back to the Data 💻

Gendered and partisan responses to proposed rate increases [An absurdly busy couple of months has kept me away from the blogosphere—sorry. Will try to get back into a regular groove now] Winning public support

Issue framing and public willingness to pay water & sewer rate increases 🎓

AWWA Water Science, March 2022 This study uses an embedded survey experiment to evaluate the effects of issue framing on willingness to pay water and sewer rate increases. Government-owned utilities require public support for

And Water for All 🎦

Ramiro Berardo, Director ...And Water For All is an educational documentary about water affordability in Ohio. The film aims to amplify the voices of those who work toward providing clean, affordable water for all.

The Frame Game 💻

The science of talking about water rate increases It’s not about the water tower—it’s about what’s inside Strictly from a value standpoint, it’s hard to imagine anything that provides more bang for the buck

The Revolution Will Not be Legislated 💻

Notes on the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Part III Water professionals of America, unite! Late last year Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, authorizing

Reading the Tea Leaves 💻

Notes on the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Part II* The Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act is 1,039 pages long. That’s a lot of tea. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, better known as

The Sweet Spot 💻

How much consolidation is enough? you know it when you hit the sweet spot There’s a growing consensus that there are way too many water utilities in the United States. America’s 50,000 community water

(Un)taxing the Tap 💻

How to stop taxing water It’s hard to know exactly how much money Americans are paying in taxes at the tap, but it’s a lot. Last time I described the variety of ways that

Environmental Federalism in Indian Country 🎓

Sovereignty, primacy & environmental protection Policy Studies Journal, May 2020 Mellie Haider, Manuel P. Teodoro The landmark American environmental laws of the 1970s originally made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and subsequent

Stop Taxing Tap Water 💻

Collecting tax revenue through water bills hurts affordability & turns utilities into coercive agents of government Can you find the tax? They may not realize it, but tens of millions of Americans pay taxes

Lone Star Blues 💻

When utility regulation fails, democracy fails when utilities fail, democracy fails The utility failures in the Lone Star State last week cascaded into a disaster when extreme weather hit an isolated electrical grid.* But

Confluence 💻

Confluence. [kän-flü-ən(t)s]. n. A coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point. Water is a big deal in Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania is a swing state. Am I being too subtle? More evidence that,

Art of the Possible 💻

Why water should be the Biden Administration’s top environmental priority Manny's electoral map The Biden administration’s environmental policy priorities are likely to be quite different from the Trump administration’s, and the impending change at

Graphic Realism 💻

Organization of U.S. drinking water utilities in a few simple figures Here are some graphs that convey a few key things about the organization of drinking water utilities in the United States.* Sources: Energy

Clean water regulation in Indian Country 💻

Sovereignty isn’t what’s on paper, it’s what flows through taps and rivers Environmental sovereignty (Photo: nativenewsonline.net) America is slowly awakening to the dire state of tribal water and sewer systems. Access to drinking water

The Plan 💻

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

Grow to Shrink, Shrink to Grow 💻

Better Together Water Sector Reform #1: Consolidation 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 reforms to transform

Golden Opportunity 💻

What the Cuyahoga River Fire says about the past and maybe the future Fifty years ago this week the Cuyahoga River caught fire in downtown Cleveland. Observers of U.S. water policy and environmentalism