The Excerpt: Many Americans don't have access to safe drinking water. How do we fix that?

On Suday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Many of us take access to clean water for granted, but for millions of Americans, the water coming out of their taps simply isn’t safe to drink. While recent water crises in Jackson, Mississippi; Flint, Michigan; and New Orleans, Louisiana have made national headlines, implementing solutions has been a challenge. The water equity issue is also a social justice one with low-income, Black and Brown communities experiencing the highest water insecurity. Why hasn’t one of the world’s richest countries been able to fix the problem? Shannon Marquez, the Dean of Global Engagement and Professor of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Columbia University, talks about costs and obstacles to addressing our country's water infrastructure failures.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, November 12th, 2023.

Many of us in the US take access to clean water for granted, but for millions of Americans, the water coming out of their taps simply isn't safe to drink. Recent water crises in Jackson, Mississippi, Flint, Michigan, and New Orleans, Louisiana have made national headlines but implementing solutions has been a challenge. And as many of you might've already guessed, the water equity issue is also a social justice one, with low income, black and brown communities experiencing the highest water insecurity. Why hasn't one of the world's richest countries been able to fix the problem? Our guest today is Shannon Marquez, the Dean of Global Engagement and Professor of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Columbia University. Shannon, thanks for joining us.

Shannon Marquez:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Let's start by giving listeners a sense of the scope of the issue here. How widespread is the lack of access to clean drinking water across the US and what do you see as the biggest contributing problems here?

Shannon Marquez:

The biggest contributing problem is aging infrastructure. When we look at our country's water systems, there's been decades of underinvestment that's brought America's water systems to this tipping point. And whereas bridges and roads have traditionally been funded by federal taxes, water infrastructure in this country has historically been the responsibility of local utilities and community water systems. So what this means is underserved communities tend to have less resources. There are approximately 50,000 US water utilities across this nation, including thousands that are small utilities that do not have the capacity to manage their own aging water systems. And top of that, there's insufficient data on how many systems need infrastructure improvements. So due to this ongoing lack of funding and underinvestment, the focus has been on operation and maintenance rather than comprehensive capital improvements. Water utilities do their best to sort of patch holes when they can instead of replacing pipes. And so this is leading to catastrophic failures because they can't keep up.

Dana Taylor:

Well, Shannon, let's dig into some of the specific places that have recently experienced water crises. Places like Jackson, Mississippi, Flint, Michigan, New Orleans. Did they all experience the same problem, different problems? What happened in each of these cases?

Shannon Marquez:

It's a combination of things. You have the aging infrastructure, you have these planning issues, but then on top of that, we have climate change. So as weather patterns are changing, flooding in particular is impacting water systems. Their ability to have backup plans and backup systems is impaired. On top of that, the shrinking population in certain communities means there's less of a base to collect water bills. So those fees that are generated can't possibly be enough to cover the infrastructure improvements. Many communities have what we call combined sewer overflows, where all of the rainwater plus wastewater plus runoff are combined into one pipe, one system. And when that has a problem, there is huge public health significance because there are certain contaminants that are impacting people's health. So there's a variety of things that are happening depending on the system. In some cases, a system may have really significant infrastructure challenges that are closely linked to public health. And in other cases it might be linked to the fact that they're a coastal community and climate change and flooding is impacting the system.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. So you mentioned climate change as one of the leading factors of water insecurity, but what can people actually do about that? How do you advise people on this?

Shannon Marquez:

Communities are generally uninformed about the vulnerabilities and challenges with water systems. For example, when we hear there's a water main break, it's usually reported in the context of a traffic disruption, not an infrastructure failure and a potential public health risk. So the first thing community members can do is really become more knowledgeable about their water systems in their local community. What are some of the challenges and the stressors? Also though, we need to begin to shift our thinking, water is not a commodity that is properly valued. People take for granted that it's going to be readily available and safe and they do not realize what it truly costs to protect water systems and make them more reliable.

So community members really need to take a more active interest as well in holding local utilities as well as the federal government reliable. What this means is, in underserved communities, areas that are disenfranchised historically, there needs to be more due diligence, more intentional focus on ensuring that the vulnerabilities that exist, which mirror all the other institutional racism and historical issues that have occurred, that this issue gets properly addressed. Because what we often see is a response when there's a tragedy. This requires some planning and seeking out resources.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so let's talk numbers. The 2012 American Waterworks Association report estimated that at least $1 trillion will be required over a 25-year period, beginning in 2010, to fix our water systems. Is that enough?

Shannon Marquez:

Absolutely not. You mentioned $1 trillion. I think the civil engineers say even as little as $472 billion is the cost to replace pipe. We really do not have the data from across these utilities to truly understand the extent of the need. On top of that, it's a moving target because as this infrastructure continues to age, it continues to fail. So it's like a Whac-A-Mole, we start working on one area and fixing the problem, but because the systems are so fragmented, they're disconnected, we can't possibly get in front of it. And so, although I think the administration thought they were doing a great thing by allocating federal funds to address this infrastructure challenge, it is really only a drop in the bucket.

Dana Taylor:

Wow. So as you've mentioned, President Joe Biden, he signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law a couple of years ago. Has the money set aside for rehabilitating water infrastructure even been deployed yet?

Shannon Marquez:

I mean, some of the funds have been deployed because, in fact, there had been a priority on replacing lead pipe because of the public health significance and what we saw in Flint in particular. But as I just mentioned, this is really only one small part of the problem. There really needs to be some additional technical support to help these small communities as well. And then I think there's also an equity issue. Who's deciding where the most vulnerable are living? How do we gather this data? Because we don't really know across the 50,000 systems where the trouble spots are. We only are responding to what we see, but we really need a comprehensive research agenda to acquire this data as well.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. So besides investing in new infrastructure, have you seen any other innovative solutions?

Shannon Marquez:

The most innovative solutions we're looking at now is really ensuring we're also shifting toward more climate resilient infrastructure. Infrastructure that can sustain what we're going to see in sea level rise and flooding. In addition, are there ways for us to retrofit nodes to connect these smaller systems?

Dana Taylor:

Okay. Shannon, where are we in comparison with other wealthy nations on this? Are they having the same kinds of problems as we are?

Shannon Marquez:

The US is far behind. One of the other courses I teach is water and emergency context and looking at developing country issues and the global water challenge. So many of the challenges that we face in our country are mirroring some of the health endpoints and challenges that occur in low income countries around the world. And this is because of the lack of attention and the fragmentation that has existed, how the responsibilities were pushed to local utilities and local communities and the federal government not being engaged or having oversight. So we really do have a lot to learn.

Dana Taylor:

What gives you the most hope here?

Shannon Marquez:

There are empowered communities who are now really becoming more aware of these challenges. Unfortunately, it's because of these tragic events that have occurred. The lessons learned help us to realize how we need to be more actively engaged in our communities and how we need to push our government officials to prioritize water because water is life we cannot live without water. Economic development is strongly linked to water as well. And so the success of the community is largely linked to us addressing these water challenges.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. And then finally, if there was one thing that you wanted people to walk away from this conversation with, what would that be?

Shannon Marquez:

I'd really want them to think very carefully about the role they play in preserving and conserving water, but also on the contamination side. When you think of this competing interest of development and the impact it has on our water systems and the wastewater, in fact, the role that we all play. People put that aside at times when they think about environmental issues but increasingly the margins are very thin and it could be a matter of life and death at some point. We'd like to leave something for our children and our grandchildren and there's a role that as community members, we can play as well. It's not just the government.

Dana Taylor:

Thank you so much for joining us, Shannon.

Shannon Marquez:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.