An official website of the United States government
Purpose This study aims to determine preference and concerns regarding tap vs bottled water and recommendations to increase tap water use in a US Midwest university. The authors propose interventions to increase tap water use based on survey results. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted an online survey of the community of a regional comprehensive university in the St. Louis metro-east region (Illinois, USA). They analyzed 781 responses using mixed methods, and developed recommendations based on community-based social marketing principles. Findings Black respondents reported higher bottled water use than White respondents. Undergraduate students reported higher bottled water use than faculty or staff. Most respondents were concerned about cost and environmental impact for bottled water and taste and water quality for tap water. Chemical and safety concerns were specific and location-focused for tap water only. Concerns were similar to Safe Drinking Water Act mandated public information, such as prior reports of lead (Pb) in campus drinking water. Tap water taste concerns may relate to proximity to the water treatment plant, resulting in high residual chlorine levels. To increase tap water use in this community, the authors recommend persuasive information campaigns, improvements to infrastructure and distribution that increase tap water convenience, more transparent public reporting on tap water lead levels, management of residual chlorine levels, and establishment of institutional norms favoring tap water over bottled water. Originality/value The authors evaluate barriers to drinking tap water across multiple environmental and social systems. The methods used in this study combine mixed methods analysis and community-based social marketing. The findings integrate respondent demographics and concerns, local water quality, local and national contamination events, campus-specific sustainability initiatives and barriers, and national drinking water regulations.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on January 30, 2026
Water security in North Carolina’s most economically insecure county: a case study
Abstract Negative health impacts of water insecurity are often felt most in poor and rural communities and communities of color, who are more likely to be underserved by water infrastructure and disproportionately subject to socioeconomic stressors. Despite mandated efforts to allocate significant federal resources to infrastructure funding in ‘disadvantaged communities,’ communities with the most need risk systematic exclusion from access to resources, decision-making structures, and even benefits of research intended to address inequitable infrastructure services and health outcomes in their own communities. This project aims to describe groundwork and preliminary findings from community-engaged environmental research conducted within an ongoing community-based participatory research partnership in Robeson County, NC, a majority–minority county with the lowest median household income of NC’s 100 counties. Semi-structured interviews conducted with community members were analyzed to identify concerns about drinking water security (including safety, affordability, and reliability), perceptions of water quality, averting behaviors taken due to water insecurity, and ideas for improving water security. Findings suggest that there is a high level of mistrust in community water supplies, with perceptions of poor water quality driving a reliance on bottled water. Those relying on private wells expressed greater trust in their water and lower reliance on bottled water. Concerns about affordability were less prominent than those about water quality. Insufficient water reliability (low flow) was mentioned by many respondents, including those with community water service and those relying on private wells. Most supported increasing taxes to improve water security and also recommended increasing communications between water service providers and the public to improve trust. Overall, this work suggests the need for a comprehensive assessment of the quality and reliability of community water services in Robeson County, interventions to address problems identified, and much more engagement with the community about identifying and allocating funding to solve water security problems.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2246584
- PAR ID:
- 10574272
- Publisher / Repository:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Volume:
- 20
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 1748-9326
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 024047
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
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
-
In the United States, underbounded communities—urban disadvantaged unincorporated neighborhoods characterized by high-poverty and high residential density lying just outside the border of an incorporated municipality—often lack consistent access to clean and safe water. Poor water quality and inadequate infrastructure shape residents’ risk perceptions, often leading to tap water mistrust, but little is known about the broader social, political, and economic drivers of water quality in these settings or about how such drivers inform the social construction of risk across different stakeholder groups. Using an underbounded African-American/Hispanic neighborhood in the Tampa Bay metropolitan region as a case study, we illustrate how tap water mistrust is socially constructed and how these constructions contrast between neighborhood residents and government officials. Interviews and participant observation with these groups reveal that tap water mistrust emerges from the nexus of inadequate infrastructure, poor housing conditions, challenges relating to the affordability of piped water, and jurisdictional disconnects. We call for interventions that foreground participatory research, integrate social and cultural context into technical solutions, and prioritize equitability in decision making.more » « less
-
The measurement of household-level and individual-level water insecurity has accelerated over the past 5 years through innovation and dissemination of new survey-based experiential psychometric scales modelled after food insecurity scales. These measures offer needed insight into the relative frequency of various dimensions of water problems experienced by households or individuals. But they currently tell us nothing about the severity of these experiences, mitigating behaviours (ie, adaptation) or the effectiveness of water-related behaviours (ie, resilience). Given the magnitude of the global challenge to provide water security for all, we propose a low-cost, theoretically grounded modification to common water insecurity metrics in order to capture information about severity, adaptation and resilience. We also discuss ongoing challenges in cost-effective measurement related to multidimensionality, water affordability and perception of water quality for maximising the impact and sustainability of water supply interventions. The next generation of water insecurity metrics promises better monitoring and evaluation tools—particularly in the context of rapid global environmental change—once scale reliability across diverse contexts is better characterised.more » « less
-
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.more » « less
