Who gets water from who? The answer is pretty hard to tell at a national level...and even local, for that matter!
In most US states, we do not have a clear picture of who supplies our drinking water. For the urban folks, perhaps you’ve seen it on your water bill, but if you are a renter, chances are you do not pay that bill and thus wouldn’t have much interaction with your water provider. If you live in a more rural area, you may get water from a larger county system, your own private well, or you may pay for hauled water. So then why does it matter if anyone else knows who supplies water to households? Here is why it matters:
Let’s say you are a renter and are curious about where your water comes from or want to make sure it is safe to drink - how would you answer that question? Or, you are a parent and your child goes to daycare across town or in a neighboring community - who is supplying their drinking water?
For state agencies and water utilities to prepare for flooding or wildfire emergencies, it’s important to understand where neighboring systems begin and end. In the case of flooding or wildfire, how would administrators know the right utility managers and community members to notify about possible water quality impacts? Additionally, for drought planning, how would agencies map populations served and expected population growth within the area that a utility serves?
There is a national database of all water systems and, importantly, water quality violations. However, this is just one long table of information - how do we know which specific communities are impacted by water quality violations without geospatial information?
The Justice40 initiative requires 40% of federal water infrastructure benefits flow to disadvantaged communities. That necessitates tracking which communities are receiving federal investments, and at this point, we could tell you which water systems received federal funding, but do not know which communities those water systems serve. How do we then determine if we are actually reaching Justice40 goals?
To answer any of these questions, it is important to have water service area boundaries - the geospatial data layer that denotes where drinking water systems serve water. And, that must be publicly available in an easily accessible format for communities and policymakers alike.
So, how do we get service area boundaries for the whole country?
Recent research published by Yolanda McDonald’s Drinking Water Equity Lab set a foundation of where we are in the US today on this topic (map below). Only a handful of states make maps of drinking water systems available to the public, including Arizona, New Jersey, and Texas, among others. Other states may have service area boundary data for only a small subset of water systems they regulate, or the state may not make the maps available to the public. That brings us to about 31 states that have some form of geospatial data on water service area boundaries, and 19 that have nothing. For Native American Reservations, the Indian Health Services maintains a database of this information, but it is not available to the public, nor is the quality of the data consistent across the US.
Map modified from McDonald, Y. A systematic review of geospatial representation of United States community water systems. AWWA Water Science, Volume: 4, Issue: 1, First published: 09 January 2022, DOI: (10.1002/aws2.1266)
To address this vital data gap in the US drinking water sector, EPIC is collaborating with other nonprofit and for-profit partners and with government agencies to create an approximate map of service area boundaries for all community water systems in the US. Our goal is not to immediately create a perfect map of all systems in the country. This will require verification and improvement by many regulators and water system managers with limited time and resources. Rather, we will lay the groundwork for an accurate national map by:
Consolidating and sharing existing service area boundary data in one easily accessible location
Approximating service area boundaries where publicly available information is not already available, and
Facilitating improvements to the approximate service area boundary map by state regulators and water systems themselves
For those that are curious to get much deeper into the project plan, you can read that here.
By April 2022, our collaborator SimpleLab will have developed a first draft geospatial data layer to approximate water system service area boundaries for the US. From April through November 2022, we will provide preliminary map access to stakeholders for feedback, determine opportunities for refinement, and plan next steps with collaborators.
A large part of this project is engaging with stakeholders that could benefit from this data, and ensuring that what we create sets a useful baseline for the water sector to improve upon. We are working with the Internet of Water Coalition to engage academics, consulting firms, and state agencies that have developed this data to date to improve our modeling methods and understand the resources needed to maintain an accurate service area database over time. We are also engaging federal regulators and water associations that understand the landscape of key stakeholders and beneficiaries of this information. In the long run, the goal would be for this database to be fully owned and maintained by the EPA alongside the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS).
If you are interested in helping us achieve that goal, curious to dive more into the data, brainstorm methods, connect about use cases or additional stakeholders we should know of, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at jessie@policyinnovation.org!
