Water Service Connections Research Articles

Water tariffs and social equity: Towards water service connections and pricing instruments for the poor

AbstractAside from operational sustainability and efficiency goals, water tariffs also need to address the requirements of affordability and equity, in most instances, by providing subsidies to poor households. Yet, poor households are unable to enjoy the benefits of such cross‐subsidization and linked conveniences as they are unable to get water service connections. Even with a well‐designed water tariff, the inability of poor households to get piped connections results in the payment of premiums for water that is difficult to access and, at times, of questionable quality. In this paper, we assess the pro‐poor projects of three Philippine municipal water systems and suggest that providing water service connections to poor households allows these households to avoid paying the water poverty premium, as well as experience the related public health and quality of life benefits accruing from such connections. We argue that designing the best tariff for existing socio‐economic, political, and environmental realities must go hand in hand with programs that provide water service connections to poor households as this will ensure not only operational viability but also equitable water provision.

Water Infrastructure as Intrusion: Race, Exclusion, and Nostalgic Futures in North Carolina

In the late 1990s, the predominantly white community of Morningside, North Carolina, prevented annexation into the larger majority-minority city of Greensboro, citing their desire to “preserve their way of life.” This case demonstrates how a white, affluent town incorporated, resisting annexation, and with it, centralized water service connections. More than twenty years later, many residents in Morningside continue to reject centralized water and sewerage, fearing it will facilitate in-migration and erode the town’s “community character.” These decades-long dynamics maintain the high degree of racial residential segregation between Morningside and neighboring Greensboro. Morningside stands in stark contrast to many Black communities in North Carolina, which are underbounded and excluded from municipal water and sanitation. This case contributes to environmental injustice and water security scholarship in three ways. First, we enrich the meaning ascribed to water infrastructure and the purposes that it serves—as a connection (an improvement) and as an intrusion. Second, by situating these current contests within a larger historical context, we highlight the social constructedness of water. In this dialectical relationship, water is both the outward mechanism to marginalize, hiding the actors behind the process, and the object of corruption for people who are marginalized. Third, we demonstrate how water infrastructure advances exclusionary futures that rely on erasure and discursive coding. Overall, we caution how the depoliticization of centralized water infrastructure can enable the persistence of racial residential segregation in the United States.

Potential Performance of Hydraulic State Estimation in Water Distribution Networks

Hydraulic State Estimation (HSE) is a suitable tool to gain real-time understanding of water supply systems. This technique enables to estimate the most likely hydraulic behavior in the network, as well as its associated uncertainty, from available measurements. HSE has been successfully applied to trunk mains, but additional work is required to implement it on Water Distribution Networks (WDNs). The reason for this is that WDNs generally have less real-time information than trunk mains. The new telemetry devices that can be installed at water service connections provide an opportunity to gain distributed information that could be used to monitor WDNs using HSE. However, these technologies often provide records with different time intervals (i.e. sampling rates), which should be leveled to the same time resolution for HSE application. This poses a challenge: combining information associated with different temporal scales, especially when there are larger time intervals than the monitoring time resolution, which requires considering additional uncertainty due to temporal disaggregation. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to propose a methodology that enables to systematically level records with different time intervals to a same time resolution. This makes the application of HSE to WDNs affordable and enables to consistently evaluate the associated uncertainty. Second, to analyze the potential of HSE in WDNs using a case study. This paper thus presents a systematic framework to assess HSE at different resolution levels and highlights the importance of increasing the information available within the distribution level to reduce uncertainty.

Estimation of household willingness to pay for fluoride-free water connection in the Rift Valley Region of Ethiopia: A model study.

The study examines households' willingness to pay for fluoride-safe water service connection in the Rift Valley Region of Ethiopia. The open-ended, contingent valuation, elicitation survey was used to estimate the values of fluoride safe water service connection (FSWSC) at home and at the nearest public tap. Using an Ordinary Least Square method, the estimated willingness to pay (WTP) for 2 m3 of fluoride safe water consumption connected at home is valued at USD 13.70 and that at the nearest public tap is valued at USD 6.84 per month. Considering the censored Tobit Model, the estimated WTP for 2 m3 of FSWSC at home is valued at USD 13.45 and that at the nearest public tap at USD 6.54 per month. The income share of households' WTP for fluoride-safe water service consumption per month ranges from 8 percent to 16 percent. In addition, the benefit cost ratio analysis for the FSWSC to a nearest public tap and at home is 5.31 and 10.93 respectively, showing that fluoride-safe water supply is economically feasible. Factors such as perceptions about the quality of water, degree of dissatisfaction with available water service, education level of households, ownership of the house, and the number of children less than 5 years of age are found to have positive significant influence on households' WTP. On the contrary, age of the respondents, water bill, gender (being male), and location of the participant those in Adama and Lume reveals negative significant influences on households' WTP. The overall policy implications are that government needs to mobilize fund from the residents, invite the private sector or operate with public private partnership mode, and install community based fluoride safe public taps at large to bridge the unmet fluoride safe water demand gap.

Unused Water Connection Not Subject to New Infrastructure Charge

The Court of Appeals of Washington ruled that a city's new infrastructure charge for water service connection did not apply to a property owner who had already connected his property to the city's water system.

Demonstrating Backflow Through Backsiphonage

This article discusses backsiphonage as a form of backflow in residential situations. It stresses the importance of each water service connection complying with all plumbing codes, and that the homeowner's irrigation system have routine performance checks. A display board included in the article demonstrates how backsiphonage occurs through a broken water main when a discharge valve is opened at the pipe break scene.

The Morgan Hill Earthquake of April 24, 1984—Investigation of Lifelines

The overall response of all lifelines was good although there was some significant damage. In the power system there was significant damage to 500 kV circuit breakers at two substations, some other minor substation damage, and some damage to feeders in the distribution system. The substation damage did put a segment of one of the AC Pacific Interties out of service for a couple of days but the remaining intertie was able to carry the load. The loss of feeder lines caused local disruption of power for up to 5 hours. In water and sewage systems two 8 inch transit water lines broke in Morgan Hill and a break in an 8 inch pipe to a 350,000 gallon tank caused a large water loss. Five 6 inch water line couplings disengaged. There were numerous water service connection failures in the high damage area. There was no significant damage to communication systems but there was a significant downgrade in the quality of service due to system overload. Calls from outside the area were limited by AT&T. Damage to highway systems was limited to that caused by a rock slide which blocked E. Dunne Avenue near the Anderson Reservoir and damaged a nearby bridge over the reservoir. One bridge span moved one foot near an abutment and caused the adjacent pier to move out of plumb by almost one foot. The road surface on the crest of the Anderson Dam was cracked but there was no damage to the dam. In the natural gas system there was no damage to the utilities part of the system. A large fire in San Jose was caused by a gas leak in piping to a gas fired industrial heater. There was an explosion and fire in a mobile home and numerous leaks associated with toppled water heaters. There were numerous leaks beyond service connections to homes in the high damage area.

Water consumption in small communities of northeast Thailand

Water consumption in 14 rural communities of northeast Thailand was studied to determine water needs and to delineate the factors that affect water use. For 13 of these communities, average daily water consumption ranged from 10 to 90 1/cap/day (liters per capita per day). In one village with free wafer distributed through house connections 24 hr/day, water usage ranged from 115 to 160 1/cap/day. Water consumption was significantly influenced by the season of year, limited hours of availability of water through the distribution system, type of water service connection, and price of water for metered house connections only. Design criteria for maximum daily and maximum hourly water demands were found to be 1.5 and 4 times the average daily water consumption, respectively. The data collected reflect initial water use values in villages where water systems are only a few years old.

Trends in Residential Water Use

water from the system. The resulting figure may at times be completely misleading; as, for example, when the population served differs from the census population, or when total water used differs from the total pumpage. It is the thesis of this article that water use can better be established on the basis of sales per water service connection that is, that per capita consumption can best be expressed as the amount of water sold to residential