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

Cristina Marcillo,Justin Krometis,Leigh-Anne Krometis

doi:10.3390/ijerph182413254

Cristina Marcillo, Justin Krometis + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413254

Copy DOI

Abstract

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.

Highlights

Previous research has reported economic and racial/ethnic disparities in access to centralized, treated drinking water [1,2]
This exercise allowed for the explicit examination of the research question: Are certain types of Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) violations (i.e., monitoring and reporting (MR), health based (HB)) more likely in communities with low homeownership rates, a high proportion of racial and ethnic minorities, and/or rural areas? While the results presented here are specific to Virginia, this methodology, which uses only publicly available data, has the potential for national application within the United States and/or application to explorations of community impacts on infrastructure extents in other settings where formal geospatial data are limited
confidence intervals (CIs) = 0.148, 0.665) that serve 3301–10,000 people when compared with very small community water system (CWS) that serve less than 500 people

Summary

Introduction

Previous research has reported economic and racial/ethnic disparities in access to centralized, treated drinking water [1,2]. Infrastructure investments have expanded access to community water systems, the water provided is not always of sufficient quality and quantity to meet household needs. Have larger Black or Hispanic populations [6,7,8] have poorer in-home water quality or are served by systems with more SDWA violations; only one identified study examining the Revised Arsenic Rule in Arizona failed to find a significant link between sociodemographic indicators and water quality [9]. Switzer and Teodoro [7] demonstrated that when poverty level exceeded

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion