A study led by researchers at the University of Oregon explores water injustice across the U.S. The analysis focuses on vulnerable communities facing systemic barriers to clean water and also investigates water privatization in America.
“We found that violations and risks of water injustice tend to cluster in specific areas or hot spots across the country,” said Alex Segrè Cohen, the paper’s lead author. “We designed our method to capture not just where the problems are, but who they impact most and how.”
The study integrates data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Segrè Cohen is an assistant professor of science and risk communication at UO. She joins us with more on water equity in the U.S.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. About 2 million U.S. residents do not have access to basic drinking water services. Thirty million Americans live in places where water systems do not operate safely. Privatized water systems have been put forward as a solution to these problems by some people and as a cause of these problems by others. A new study, led by a researcher at the University of Oregon, aims to clarify this picture. The scientists combined federal geographical data about water quality and ownership with survey data about how people perceive their water systems.
Alex Segrè Cohen is an assistant professor of science and risk communication at the University of Oregon and the lead author of this new study. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Alex Segrè Cohen: Hey, thanks for having me here.
Miller: What did you set out to learn with this new study?
Segrè Cohen: Yes, we’re really interested in this conversation of what a solution to the water crisis could look like. We know that climate change is making the availability and access of clean water harder to come by and that it will only get worse. There are many potential solutions to this issue and we wanted to see if privatization is actually one of them.
Miller: One of the things you did was overlapped or overlayed two different kinds of data: information about water system violations and water injustice – which we can talk about – and surveys. What was the idea of combining those two different versions of information?
Segrè Cohen: It’s really important to have data that show where the problems are and where issues are occurring. And maps are a great way of doing that. They’re visual, you can see where issues are and it helps explain larger contexts. But maps don’t necessarily always capture how people feel about these things. So we wanted to go beyond just the data of where these violations were happening and also hear from people who are experiencing things on the ground.
Miller: What kinds of questions have been asked in these surveys?
Segrè Cohen: There are a lot of different types of surveys that go out globally, but we were really curious about how people thought about their own water. Did they feel like they had enough to live comfortably? Did they think that the water was quality? So not only about having enough of it but also good quality of water. And also whether they had feelings about their water systems being controlled by the government or private entities.
Miller: So let’s turn to some of the differences you found. Generally speaking, what problems were more likely to be associated with privatized systems?
Segrè Cohen: We found that areas that had higher water injustice were run by companies and private entities that were controlling the water system. So there was less access, particularly in communities and regions where there was a higher level of minoritized communities, when those water systems were privatized.
Miller: Is that because of where private water companies chose to go in the first place, or more do you think, a symptom of how they operate when they do go into some particular place?
Segrè Cohen: We don’t know. So it could be either of them. It could also be that the governments that were controlling those water systems didn’t have the money to control them anymore. So it was in their financial interests to sell or lease out their water systems to a private entity. So our data didn’t really uncover the “why” these systems exist. But we did figure out that they existed.
Miller: OK, so a higher level of water injustice. But what does water injustice mean?
Segrè Cohen: That’s a great question. So we identified water injustice by areas where there isn’t enough access to high quality water and when those areas explicitly have people who are already socially vulnerable, based on a variety of systematic and systemic issues.
Miller: And that was more likely to be associated with privatized systems. What problems were more common in public water systems?
Segrè Cohen: We found that it was more likely that public systems would have a higher level of water violations than privatized systems across the country.
Miller: And what’s a water violation?
Segrè Cohen: That’s when water systems either have higher levels of chemicals or toxins in their water, or a violation has been reported in the past, and then folks will come and check on that violation to see if it’s been mitigated and it hasn’t yet been dealt with.
Miller: So how do you think about these two findings together? I mean, if part of the purpose of this study was to smush a whole bunch of existing data together to get a clearer picture of the risks or benefits of privatized water, it seems like it’s a mixed bag?
Segrè Cohen: Yeah, definitely. I think that, like many controversial topics, people tend to think of these issues as black or white. So either privatization is the problem or it’s the solution to dealing with water crises. And what we found is that it’s a little bit of both. So in some ways, some public water systems have more violations. And there’s more water injustice in areas that are more privatized, which really then means that these approaches should probably be dealt with on a local level. So how are local mayors or county commissioners thinking about what to do with their water and their constituents’ needs? And how are the constituents playing a role in helping make those decisions?
Miller: Let’s zero in a little bit on the Northwest. What did you find when you looked specifically in Oregon or Washington?
Segrè Cohen: We found that there were more water violations in Oregon and Washington, relative to many other places in the country. So they ranked higher in violations than about 80% of other counties in the country. And we also found that there are many counties in Oregon and Washington that also have residents that are experiencing water injustice. This was particularly true in the eastern side of both of those states.
Miller: Were you looking into places that have wells? I’m thinking about what’s been happening recently in the Umatilla Basin, with a lot of agricultural runoff that has made it so people do not have access to water from their own wells. But would that be captured in the data that you’re talking about?
Segrè Cohen: This was mostly about larger water systems than just private drinking wells. So think about the city of Portland and where they’re getting their water from, and how different towns and cities are experiencing that. It’s harder to capture the wells serving individual households, just because it’s harder for collectors of the data to go out into each home to gather that information.
Miller: What do you hope that policymakers will take from your work?
Segrè Cohen: I think that there’s this idea that these issues only exist in specific places, that water isn’t a problem in places like Oregon and Washington. When I moved to Oregon, I heard from everybody who lived here that this is some of the best water across the country. And what this data shows is that there might be some really beautiful, really great, really clean water in the state and that isn’t the case everywhere. We really need to be focusing and demanding of our politicians, and hopefully having them institute some changes, so that we can have this beautiful and clean water equally distributed across these states.
Miller: You wrote in your discussion and conclusion that there have been several successful examples of communities being a part of the environmental policy and management practices regarding their own drinking water, highlighted in the EPA’s Environmental Justice Showcase in 2023. Is that work being done by the new Trump administration’s EPA?
Segrè Cohen: It’s hard to say. I think as these programs and initiatives are receiving less funding and more scrutiny, it’s harder to continue, at the federal level, to develop these solutions and have funding go towards these solutions. So I think this is, in fact, an opportunity now to have the more local scaled governments really be taking count and taking the lead on some of these initiatives.
Miller: If we were even going to call this issue water injustice, is that something that the current EPA would even allow its funding to be spent on, its funding to try to respond to?
Segrè Cohen: Yeah, another great question. You know, I’m not sure. When we were writing this up, we noticed that some of these keywords were getting flagged. “Injustice” was obviously one of them. Injustice, in fact, has not been flagged, as of mid-April, as a problematic word. So I don’t think that the federal government is interested in solving issues of injustice. And hopefully there’s some leeway to be having these conversations, as long as these words that aren’t “acceptable” are being talked about perhaps in a different frame.
Miller: Alex Segrè Cohen, thanks very much.
Segrè Cohen: Thanks for having me.
Miller: Alex Segrè Cohen is an assistant professor of science and risk communication at the University of Oregon.
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