U.S. environmental regulators are failing to adequately account for how extensively vulnerable communities are exposed to contaminated drinking water, a new study has determined.
From 2018-2020, one in ten people in the United States were exposed to water quality violations that could impact their health, the study found. And roughly 70% of those affected are considered “socially vulnerable” under a range of factors that include race, language, disability, and housing vacancy rates.
The exposure risk was particularly noteworthy for Hispanic populations throughout the southwest and southcentral U.S. And when looking at people living on tribal lands, the numbers were more alarming: three in ten people were exposed to health-based water quality violations, the researchers found.
Overall, the number of people exposed to drinking water violations is more than three times greater than the number of people identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to the analysis. The authors note that current federal environmental justice tools leave out other factors important for identifying inequities in water quality.
“The current White House and EPA [environmental justice] tools do not seem to be appropriate for drinking water,” said lead author Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist with the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas.
The findings add to evidence that broad swaths of the population are struggling to access clean drinking water, and they come at a critical time, as the Biden Administration and US states are deploying funds aimed at addressing drinking water access and quality around the country.
The EPA has pledged $50.4 million in funding for states to improve drinking water infrastructure for small, underserved, and disadvantaged communities. More broadly, the White House has earmarked more than $50 billion to improve U.S. water infrastructure.
By not fully accounting for the people impacted by water quality violations, the program is in danger of falling short, the authors of the new paper warn.
Understanding the link between drinking water quality violations and social vulnerability is “essential” in deploying the newly available drinking water infrastructure funding, the authors state in the paper.
The study, which was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters Sept. 5, was led by researchers from the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas in Austin and funded by the EPA. The researchers used water quality data along with several factors for defining disadvantaged communities and social vulnerability that extended beyond the current standards.
Current environmental justice tools limit measurement of drinking water quality issues to areas near known contamination zones, such as designated superfund sites, and social vulnerability is largely determined by county or zip code data on income levels, the researchers said. To do their analysis, the researchers used a new database of community water system (CWS) service areas, water quality violation records and a modified “social vulnerability index.”
The dominant causes of violations in community water systems were disinfectants and disinfection byproducts, the researchers said, followed by naturally occurring contaminants such as arsenic. Nitrate contamination, largely due to fertilizers used on farms, was another identified factor in the water quality violations.
In their paper, the researchers said their work has implications for state allocations of government infrastructure funding and they urge the government to adopt a “broader definition” for identifying disadvantaged communities.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have 5 days to add 340 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.