The research documents the widespread and socially unequal crisis of drinking water and sanitation in the United States. Drawing on national data, it finds that nearly half a million households lack complete plumbing, and millions more live in areas with poor water or wastewater quality as indicated by regulatory violations. The crisis is regionally clustered and disproportionately affects rural, low-income, Indigenous, and minority communities, highlighting significant environmental injustices. It concludes that despite high national coverage rates, water hardship remains a major issue for vulnerable populations, underscoring the need for targeted policy and infrastructure interventions.
Additional Information
Many households in the United States face issues of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality. Prior scholarship on this issue has focused on one dimension of water hardship at a time, leaving the full picture incomplete. Here we begin to complete this picture by documenting incomplete plumbing and poor drinking water quality for the entire United States, as well as poor wastewater quality for the 39 states and territories where data is reliable. In doing so, we find evidence of a regionally-clustered, socially unequal household water crisis. Using data from the American Community Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency, we show there are 489,836 households lacking complete plumbing, 1,165 community water systems in Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violation, and 9,457 Clean Water Act permittees in Significant Noncompliance. Further, elevated levels of water hardship are associated with rurality, poverty, indigeneity, education, and age—representing a nationwide environmental injustice.