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1. The Municipal Drinking Water Database

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000081  

   Hughes, Sara; Kirchhoff, Christine J.; Conedera, Katelynn; Friedman, Mirit (April 2023, PLOS Water)

   Herrera, Manuel (Ed.)

   Drinking water services in the U.S. are critical for public health and economic development but face technical, political, and administrative challenges. Understanding the root cause of these challenges and how to overcome them is hindered by the lack of integrative, comprehensive data about drinking water systems and the communities they serve. The Municipal Drinking Water Database (MDWD) combines financial, institutional, demographic, and environmental conditions of U.S. municipalities and their community water systems (CWS). Municipally owned and operated CWS are ubiquitous and play a critical role in ensuring safe, affordable drinking water services for most Americans; they also offer important opportunities for understanding municipal government behavior and decision making. The MDWD is publicly available and will enable researchers and practitioners interested in viewing or tracking drinking water spending, the financial condition of municipal governments, or myriad demographic, political, institutional, and physical characteristics of municipal drinking water systems to access the data quickly and easily. This paper describes the database and its creation, details examples of how the data can be used and discusses illustrative analyses of trends and insights that can be gleaned from the database. Building and sharing more integrated datasets provides new opportunities for asking novel questions about the drivers and consequences of local decision making about drinking water. 

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2. Water security in North Carolina’s most economically insecure county: a case study

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ada4c2  

   Long, Hana C; Collins-Hall, Beverly; Moore, Kaelan; Cutts, Bethany; Gibson, Jacqueline MacDonald (January 2025, Environmental Research Letters)

   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. 

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3. Emerging investigator series: capacitive deionization for selective removal of nitrate and perchlorate: impacts of ion selectivity and operating constraints on treatment costs

   https://doi.org/10.1039/c9ew01105f  

   Hand, Steven; Cusick, Roland D. (April 2020, Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology)

   null (Ed.)

   Treating toxic monovalent anions such as NO 3 − or ClO 4 − in drinking water remains challenging due to the high capital and environmental costs associated with common technologies such as reverse osmosis or ion exchange. Capacitive deionization (CDI) is a promising technology for selective ion removal due to high reported ion selectivity for these two contaminants. However, the impacts of ion selectivity and influent water characteristics on CDI life cycle cost have not been considered. In this study we investigate the impact of ion selectivity on CDI system cost with a parameterized process model and technoeconomic analysis framework. Simulations indicate millimolar concentration contaminants such as nitrate can be removed at costs in the range of $0.01–0.30 per m 3 at reported selectivity coefficient ranges ( S = 6–10). Since perchlorate removal involves micromolar scale concentration changes, higher selectivity values than reported in literature ( S > 10 vs. S = 4–6.5) are required for comparable treatment costs. To contextualize simulated results for CDI treatment of NO 3 − , CDI unit operations were sized and costed for three case studies based on existing treatment facilities in Israel, Spain, and the United States, showing that achieving a nitrate selectivity of 10 could reduce life cycle treatment costs below $0.2 per m 3 . 

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4. Identifying the Dominant Drivers of Hydrological Change in the Contiguous United States

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2021WR029738  

   Li, Zhiying; Quiring, Steven M. (May 2021, Water Resources Research)

   Abstract Understanding the dominant drivers of hydrological change is essential for water resources management. Watersheds in the United States are experiencing different types of changes (e.g., wet gets wetter and dry gets drier); however, few studies have analyzed what drivers are responsible for these changes, and how the dominant drivers vary over time and as a function of the climate/water regime and land cover. This study uses a time‐varying Budyko framework to quantify the relative importance of precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and other factors (e.g., climate seasonality, agricultural drainage, and urbanization) in 889 watersheds in the contiguous United States from 1950 to 2009. Results show that watersheds that are getting wetter are primarily due to increases in precipitation. However, watersheds in dry climates that are getting drier are primarily due to other factors, while watersheds in wet climates that are getting drier are primarily due to precipitation. The drivers causing statistically significant streamflow trends vary depending on dominant land‐use types. Temporally, the increasing effects of other factors are more pronounced after the 1980s in the Midwest. The dominant drivers of streamflow in the United States are time‐varying instead of constant. This is consistent with non‐stationary patterns of streamflow. The time‐varying drivers provide information on the processes that are increasingly important and require the most attention in water resources management. 

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5. The high health risks of unaffordable water: An in-depth exploration of pathways from water bill burden to health-related impacts in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000077  

   Sarango, Mariana; Senier, Laura; Harlan, Sharon L. (March 2023, PLOS Water)

   Winkler, Inga T. (Ed.)

   Access to clean and safe water is essential for human health and well-being, but recent and substantial increases in the cost of water for residential customers in the United States endanger the health of those who cannot afford to pay. This study identifies pathways through which unaffordable water bills may influence the behaviors and health of vulnerable people. We interviewed a sample of low-income residential water customers who were experiencing water bill hardship in Boston and Chelsea, Massachusetts, U.S. between October 2018 and December 2019. We conducted a thematic content analysis of interview transcripts. Results showed that some participants improvised ways to pay their water bills, and some confronted obstacles that made it simply impossible to pay at times. Behavioral responses to coping with high water bills were influenced by household earning potential, self-reported health status, caretaking responsibilities, and accessibility of utility assistance programs. Consequences of unaffordable household bills included reduced access to other necessities, debt accumulation, risk of water shutoff, housing insecurity, and public humiliation. Reported health-related impacts of water bill hardship were food insecurity, underutilization of healthcare and medications, and decline in mental health. Comprehensive reforms at all levels of government are needed to make water affordable for all low-income households. Federal investments in water infrastructure, state oversight of affordability and human rights, as well as municipal tiered water pricing and comprehensive assistance policies for low-income households are needed to address the growing water affordability crisis and to mitigate harm to the well-being of vulnerable residents and communities in the United States. 

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