10.5 Access to Water and Sanitation
Alexis Castaneda-Perez and Elizabeth B. Pearce
For about 100 years, water in the United States has been supported by a federally funded infrastructure that ensures families safe drinking water and sanitation. Water-borne diseases, such as cholera, were virtually eliminated by the provision of this system. Although the effort to create safe water and sanitation was well funded up until the end of the 20th century, there are some geographic areas and groups that are underserved; systems were not funded equitably before funding dried up.
Safe water and sanitation can be defined by these three things:
- Access to safe and reliable drinking water
- A shower, toilet, and tap in the home
- A reliable system for treating and disposing of wastewater that has been used for a domestic or industrial purpose
Socioeconomic status is a barrier to safe water access. Challenges in poor communities include contaminated water supplies, housing with lead pipes, other substandard plumbing issues, and unequal distribution of public drinking water, such as water fountains in schools and other public places.
As individuals more regularly carry their water with them, access to a bottle filling station can mean the difference between a one-time purchase or the ongoing expense of hundreds of plastic water bottles (figure 10.11). Look around your own daily environments; where can you find these stations? Could there be more bottle fillers added and more equitably distributed?
Diverse Water Challenges
Almost one-third of adults in America are inadequately hydrated. Race is the biggest predictor of lack of water access; African American and Latinx people are more likely to experience a lack of adequate hydration as are lower-income people (Brooks et al., 2017). This graphic from the University of North Carolina describes six access challenges (figure 10.12).
There is no centralized government or research entity that collects national data about water and sanitation in the United States, which creates challenges to assessing and meeting needs. In November 2019, the U.S. Water Alliance and Dig Deep, two organizations dedicated to improving water access for families in the United States, released a comprehensive report analyzing all available data from local, regional, and national sources. More than 2 million Americans lack access to safe water. Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States: A National Action Plan has five key findings:
- Federal data don’t accurately measure the water access gap.
- Race is the strongest predictor of water and sanitation access.
- Poverty is a key obstacle to water access.
- Water access challenges affect entire communities.
- Progress is uneven, and some communities are backsliding.
Along with race and poverty as indicators, the report identifies residents of Puerto Rico, houseless people, and members of Native American communities as having a greater likelihood of lack of access to water and sanitation