Institutional Diversity and Safe Drinking Water Provision in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Dobbin ◽  
Amanda Fencl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
The United States ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Institutional Diversity ◽  
Water Provision

scholarly journals Approximating Community Water System Service Areas to Explore the Demographics of SDWA Compliance in Virginia

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (24) ◽  
pp. 13254
Author(s):  
Cristina Marcillo ◽  
Leigh-Anne Krometis ◽  
Justin Krometis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Water Quality ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Water System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drinking Water Quality ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Community Water ◽  
Service Areas

Although the United States Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) theoretically ensures drinking water quality, recent studies have questioned the reliability and equity associated with community water system (CWS) service. This study aimed to identify SDWA violation differences (i.e., monitoring and reporting (MR) and health-based (HB)) between Virginia CWSs given associated service demographics, rurality, and system characteristics. A novel geospatial methodology delineated CWS service areas at the zip code scale to connect 2000 US Census demographics with 2006–2016 SDWA violations, with significant associations determined via negative binomial regression. The proportion of Black Americans within a service area was positively associated with the likelihood of HB violations. This effort supports the need for further investigation of racial and socioeconomic disparities in access to safe drinking water within the United States in particular and offers a geospatial strategy to explore demographics in other settings where data on infrastructure extents are limited. Further interdisciplinary efforts at multiple scales are necessary to identify the entwined causes for differential risks in adverse drinking water quality exposures and would be substantially strengthened by the mapping of official CWS service boundaries.

scholarly journals Michigan Oil and Gas Update

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Horn ◽  
Joshua D. Beard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Protection Agency ◽  
Part C ◽  
Underground Injection ◽  
Injection Control

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (“EGLE”), formerly the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, is in the process of seeking primary enforcement responsibility from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) for its Underground Injection Control (“UIC”) program for Class II wells pursuant to Part C of the Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”).

scholarly journals Preliminary Study of Lead-Contaminated Drinking Water in Public Parks—An Assessment of Equity and Exposure Risks in Two Texas Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 6443
Author(s):  
Leanne Fawkes ◽  
Garett Sansom
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
The United States ◽  
Median Income ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Public Parks ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Contaminated Drinking Water ◽  
Lead Levels

Safe drinking water is celebrated as a public health achievement and is a top priority for the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet today, lead (Pb) contaminated drinking water has the potential to be a public health crisis in the United States. Despite efforts to provide safe drinking water, update water infrastructure, and ensure strict drinking water regulations, there are incidents of unsafe lead levels and reports of associated adverse health effects. While there has been increased attention paid to the quality of drinking water within individuals’ homes, little research has examined the presence and concentration of lead in water from drinking fountain sources located in public parks. In this study, we sampled drinking water from every accessible public park in the Bryan/College Station (BCS), TX metropolitan area (N = 56). With a lower detection level of 2.0 μg/L, we discovered a mean lead concentration of 1.3 μg/L across all sites and a maximum of 8.0 μg/L. Furthermore, neighborhoods below the median income for BCS were twice as likely to have detectable lead levels in their water and had 1.5 times the mean concentration. This study underscores the need for action and supports previous studies that have identified a disparate burden to lead exposure among low socioeconomic populations within the United States. By examining the water quality in drinking fountains in publicly accessible parks, the results of our study provide public health professionals with important information about where infrastructure should be improved and the potential harms of lead in drinking fountain water.

Flint, Michigan, and the Politics of Safe Drinking Water in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Sara Hughes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Financial Distress ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Water Crisis ◽  
Safe Drinking Water ◽  
Structured Interviews

Flint’s drinking water crisis has brought renewed⸺and needed⸺attention to the importance of safe drinking water in the United States. The Flint water crisis was the result of a confluence of factors operating at multiple scales in time and space. My aim is to draw out more explicitly the role of policy, and specifically rationalized policy, in incentivizing and allowing the mistakes and decisions that most proximately led to the Flint water crisis. I build on and extend existing analyses of the Flint water crisis, drawing on thirteen semi-structured interviews and publicly available reports, testimony, newspaper articles, and secondary data. My analysis brings to the fore the particular vulnerability to the marginalizing effects of rationalized policy and its implementation of poor and minority communities in the United States, and it reveals the stickiness and entrenchment of these rationalized policies. The response to the Flint water crisis, both in Michigan and nationally, has centered on renewed commitment to risk-based standards and rulemaking for safe drinking water protections, and maintains interventionist approaches to municipal financial distress. I discuss important alternatives that are emerging and indicate areas for future research on the politics of safe drinking water.

The Empire of Disgust

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Change Point ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Swimming Pools ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Group Resistance

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups. Frequently these exclusions are underwritten with a rhetoric of disgust: people of a certain group, it is alleged, are filthy, hyper-animal, or not fit to share such facilities as drinking water, food, and public swimming pools with the ‘clean’ and ‘fully human’ majority. But exclusions vary in their scope and also in the specific disgust-ideologies underlying them. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from the United States and India present a detailed comparative study of the varieties of prejudice and stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life: prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender, age, sexual orientation, transgender, disability, religion, and economic class. In examining these forms of stigma and their intersections, the authors present theoretically pluralistic and empirically sensitive accounts that both explain group-based stigma and suggest ways forward. These forward-looking remedies, including group resistance to subordination as well as institutional and legal change, point the way towards a public culture that is informed by our diverse histories of discrimination and therefore equipped to eliminate stigma in all of its multifaceted forms.

Lithium in groundwater used for drinking-water supply in the United States

2020 ◽  
pp. 144691
Author(s):  
Bruce D. Lindsey ◽  
Kenneth Belitz ◽  
Charles A. Cravotta ◽  
Patricia L. Toccalino ◽  
Neil M. Dubrovsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drinking Water Supply
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