U.S. border colonias are peri-urban settlements along the U.S.–Mexico border. Residents often face substandard housing, inadequate septic and sewer systems, and unsafe or inadequate household water. As of 2015, an estimated 30% of over 5 million U.S. colonia residents lacked access to clean drinking water, suggesting health complications. This scoping review identifies a very limited existing set of research on water and sanitation insecurity in U.S.–Mexico border colonias, and suggests value in additional focused research in this specific context to address health challenges. Preliminary health data indicates that due to water insecurity, colonia residents are more likely to contract gastrointestinal diseases, be exposed to carcinogenic compounds from contaminated water, and experience psychosocial distress. These widespread health issues in colonias are exacerbated by historical and ongoing socioenvironmental injustices in the U.S.–Mexico border region and their relation to the poor health outcomes.
Water insecurity in the Global North: A review of experiences in U.S. colonias communities along the Mexico border
Since the late 1970s, the term “colonias” (in English) has described low-income, peri-urban, and rural subdivisions north of the U.S.-Mexico border. These communities are in arid and semi-arid regions—now in a megadrought—and tend to have limited basic infrastructure, including community water service and sanitation. Recent scholarship has demonstrated how colonias residents experience unjust and inequitable dynamics that produce water insecurity in the Global North. In this review, we explain why U.S. colonias are an important example for theorizing water insecurity in the United States and beyond in the Global North. Tracing the history of water infrastructure development in U.S. colonias, we show how colonias are legally and socially defined by water insecurity. We draw on the published literature to discuss key factors that produce water insecurity in U.S. colonias: political exclusion, municipal underbounding, and failures in water quality monitoring. We show that water insecurity had led to negative outcomes—including poor water access, risks to physical health, and mental ill-health—in U.S. colonias. We present four possible approaches to improving water security in U.S. colonias: (1) soft paths & social infrastructure for water delivery, (2) decentralized water treatment approaches, such as point-of-use, point-of-entry, and fit-for-purpose systems; (3) informality, including infrastructural, economic, and socio-cultural innovations; and (4) political, policy, and law innovations and reforms. At the same time, we reflect seriously on how water security can be ethically achieved in partnership and aligning with the visions of U.S. colonias residents themselves.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1759972
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10328278
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- WIREs Water
- ISSN:
- 2049-1948
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract -
Colonias are self-built neighborhoods of mostly low-income families that lack basic infrastructure. While some funding from the state government has built roads and provided electricity, water and sewage systems are still lacking for many of the estimated 400,000 colonias’ residents in Texas. Of those that do have tap water, the supply is either inadequate or of questionable quality. Some colonias residents have access only to off-the-grid water supplies, and residents collect their water from community wells, or, if fortunate, from a personal well. Many of these wells are self-built and therefore shallow. In Nueces County, the groundwater in several colonias has been reported to contain arsenic, while poor sanitation practices (i.e., self-built septic systems) and heavy rainfall events in the region compromise the microbial quality of the groundwater. The naturally occurring arsenic in the aquifer and microbial contaminants from flooding events mean that the only available drinking water source in these colonias is contaminated throughout the year. In this research, datasets on water quality in nine colonias in Nueces County were collected both in wet (after a major rain/flooding event) and dry (no significant rainfall for four weeks) periods. The water quality analyses included traditional microbial quality assessment (total coliforms, Escherichia coli, and heterotrophs), pH, hardness, total dissolved solids, and a suite of metals that are relevant to human health (e.g., arsenic and lead). Microbial community analyses also were completed on select samples to assess the shifts in microbial ecology between wet and dry periods. Results reveal that water quality varies based on environmental conditions and presents a serious risk to human health. Water sampled during the wet period had extensive microbial contamination with elevated heterotrophs and total coliforms, and E. coli was identified in some samples. In the dry period, water from a number of colonias exhibited elevated levels of arsenic (above United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Maximum Contaminant Level of 10 µg/L). This study is one of the first to systematically investigate water quality in Texas colonias, and the results highlight how water quality in these communities is compromised year-round, going between microbial contamination in wet events and arsenic contamination in dry events.more » « less
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The colonias in Texas along the Mexican border are self-built neighborhoods of low-income families that lack basic infrastructure. While some funding from the State of Texas has built roads and provided electricity, water and sewage systems are still lacking for many of the estimated 400,000 colonias’ residents. Of those that do have tap water, the supply is either inadequate or of questionable quality. These communities have suffered from waterborne disease, such as cholera epidemics, over the past few decades. This research is the first to collect a comprehensive dataset on water use, socio-economic parameters, and actual water quality in selected colonias in several counties in Texas. A quantitative statistical model has been developed using structural equation modeling, that relates social drivers for water use and management with actual water quality. Water quality parameters measured in these communities include traditional microbial indicators (total coliforms, E. coli, and heterotrophs), pH, hardness, free and total chlorine, and metals (arsenic and lead). The model explores relationships among latent variables relating water, health, and living situation to assess potential impacts of a water treatment technology in these low-income households. The study provides quantitatively reports for the need and desire of adopting a point-of-use treatment system, evaluates the relationship between perceived versus actual water quality, and determines the factors that influence the choice of drinking water. This model can be adopted for identifying social drivers for water use and management in other low-income communities in the United States.more » « less
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Abstract Water scholarship has advanced considerably in recent decades. Despite this remarkable progress, water challenges may be growing more quickly than our capacity to solve them. While much progress has been made toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 — water and sanitation for all — new stressors have emerged to threaten this progress. Far from being a problem of the Global South, recent research shows that water insecurity is very much a global phenomenon — and one that has been, until recently, seriously neglected in the Global North. This indicates a strong need for innovative measurement of who experiences water insecurity, new approaches for monitoring the efficacy of water interventions, and more effective management of complex, mobile, and multiple water infrastructures to achieve water security. In this paper, we introduce the Household Water Insecurity approach to addressing these concerns. First, we suggest ways to improve the measurement of water insecurity — pinpointing problems at the household and individual levels — in ways that can inform policymaking with improved precision. Second, we discuss ways that new information and communication technology can improve monitoring and indicate where water infrastructure repairs and investments are most needed. Third, we highlight the need for new approaches to managing complex water infrastructures in more inclusive and democratic ways.
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Nicewonger, Todd E. ; McNair, Lisa D. ; Fritz, Stacey (Ed.)https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/alaskanative/ At the start of the pandemic, the editors of this annotated bibliography initiated a remote (i.e., largely virtual) ethnographic research project that investigated how COVID-19 was impacting off-site modular construction practices in Alaska Native communities. Many of these communities are located off the road system and thus face not only dramatically higher costs but multiple logistical challenges in securing licensed tradesmen and construction crews and in shipping building supplies and equipment to their communities. These barriers, as well as the region’s long winters and short building seasons, complicate the construction of homes and related infrastructure projects. Historically, these communities have also grappled with inadequate housing, including severe overcrowding and poor-quality building stock that is rarely designed for northern Alaska’s climate (Marino 2015). Moreover, state and federal bureaucracies and their associated funding opportunities often further complicate home building by failing to accommodate the digital divide in rural Alaska and the cultural values and practices of Native communities.[1] It is not surprising, then, that as we were conducting fieldwork for this project, we began hearing stories about these issues and about how the restrictions caused by the pandemic were further exacerbating them. Amidst these stories, we learned about how modular home construction was being imagined as a possible means for addressing both the complications caused by the pandemic and the need for housing in the region (McKinstry 2021). As a result, we began to investigate how modular construction practices were figuring into emergent responses to housing needs in Alaska communities. We soon realized that we needed to broaden our focus to capture a variety of prefabricated building methods that are often colloquially or idiomatically referred to as “modular.” This included a range of prefabricated building systems (e.g., manufactured, volumetric modular, system-built, and Quonset huts and other reused military buildings[2]). Our further questions about prefabricated housing in the region became the basis for this annotated bibliography. Thus, while this bibliography is one of multiple methods used to investigate these issues, it played a significant role in guiding our research and helped us bring together the diverse perspectives we were hearing from our interviews with building experts in the region and the wider debates that were circulating in the media and, to a lesser degree, in academia. The actual research for each of three sections was carried out by graduate students Lauren Criss-Carboy and Laura Supple.[3] They worked with us to identify source materials and their hard work led to the team identifying three themes that cover intersecting topics related to housing security in Alaska during the pandemic. The source materials collected in these sections can be used in a variety of ways depending on what readers are interested in exploring, including insights into debates on housing security in the region as the pandemic was unfolding (2021-2022). The bibliography can also be used as a tool for thinking about the relational aspects of these themes or the diversity of ways in which information on housing was circulating during the pandemic (and the implications that may have had on community well-being and preparedness). That said, this bibliography is not a comprehensive analysis. Instead, by bringing these three sections together with one another to provide a snapshot of what was happening at that time, it provides a critical jumping off point for scholars working on these issues. The first section focuses on how modular housing figured into pandemic responses to housing needs. In exploring this issue, author Laura Supple attends to both state and national perspectives as part of a broader effort to situate Alaska issues with modular housing in relation to wider national trends. This led to the identification of multiple kinds of literature, ranging from published articles to publicly circulated memos, blog posts, and presentations. These materials are important source materials that will likely fade in the vastness of the Internet and thus may help provide researchers with specific insights into how off-site modular construction was used – and perhaps hyped – to address pandemic concerns over housing, which in turn may raise wider questions about how networks, institutions, and historical experiences with modular construction are organized and positioned to respond to major societal disruptions like the pandemic. As Supple pointed out, most of the material identified in this review speaks to national issues and only a scattering of examples was identified that reflect on the Alaskan context. The second section gathers a diverse set of communications exploring housing security and homelessness in the region. The lack of adequate, healthy housing in remote Alaska communities, often referred to as Alaska’s housing crisis, is well-documented and preceded the pandemic (Guy 2020). As the pandemic unfolded, journalists and other writers reported on the immense stress that was placed on already taxed housing resources in these communities (Smith 2020; Lerner 2021). The resulting picture led the editors to describe in their work how housing security in the region exists along a spectrum that includes poor quality housing as well as various forms of houselessness including, particularly relevant for the context, “hidden homelessness” (Hope 2020; Rogers 2020). The term houseless is a revised notion of homelessness because it captures a richer array of both permanent and temporary forms of housing precarity that people may experience in a region (Christensen et al. 2107). By identifying sources that reflect on the multiple forms of housing insecurity that people were facing, this section highlights the forms of disparity that complicated pandemic responses. Moreover, this section underscores ingenuity (Graham 2019; Smith 2020; Jason and Fashant 2021) that people on the ground used to address the needs of their communities. The third section provides a snapshot from the first year of the pandemic into how CARES Act funds were allocated to Native Alaska communities and used to address housing security. This subject was extremely complicated in Alaska due to the existence of for-profit Alaska Native Corporations and disputes over eligibility for the funds impacted disbursements nationwide. The resources in this section cover that dispute, impacts of the pandemic on housing security, and efforts to use the funds for housing as well as barriers Alaska communities faced trying to secure and use the funds. In summary, this annotated bibliography provides an overview of what was happening, in real time, during the pandemic around a specific topic: housing security in largely remote Alaska Native communities. The media used by housing specialists to communicate the issues discussed here are diverse, ranging from news reports to podcasts and from blogs to journal articles. This diversity speaks to the multiple ways in which information was circulating on housing at a time when the nightly news and radio broadcasts focused heavily on national and state health updates and policy developments. Finding these materials took time, and we share them here because they illustrate why attention to housing security issues is critical for addressing crises like the pandemic. For instance, one theme that emerged out of a recent National Science Foundation workshop on COVID research in the North NSF Conference[4] was that Indigenous communities are not only recovering from the pandemic but also evaluating lessons learned to better prepare for the next one, and resilience will depend significantly on more—and more adaptable—infrastructure and greater housing security.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1595
