If water rates continue rising at projected amounts, the number of US households unable to afford water could triple in five years, to nearly 36 percent.
A variety of factors, ranging from aging infrastructure to climate change to population decline in urban areas, are making residents’ ability to afford water and wastewater services a burgeoning crisis, says Elizabeth Mack, an assistant geography professor at Michigan State University, who analyzed water consumption, pricing, and demographic and socioeconomic data for the study.
Published online in the journal PLOS ONE, her study is one of the first nationwide investigations of water affordability.
“In cities across the United States, water affordability is becoming an increasingly critical issue,” says Mack.
Spending on water and wastewater services combined should make up no more than 4.5 percent of household income, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends. Based on that criteria, some 13.8 million US households (or 11.9 percent of all households) may find water bills unaffordable—a hardship that hits poor families particularly hard, Mack says.
Water rates have increased 41 percent since 2010, and if they continue at that pace over the next five years the number of households that cannot afford water and wastewater services could soar to an estimated 40.9 million, or 35.6 percent of all households.
Aging infrastructure
One driving factor is aging infrastructure. Experts say it will cost more than $1 trillion to replace outdated water systems over the next 25 years. Another pressure is climate change, as more intense weather events fuel a need for improvements to wastewater facilities. Making such adaptations will cost the United States more than $36 billion by 2050, according to estimates.
Further, shrinking populations in major cities such as Detroit and Philadelphia means fewer people to pay for the large fixed cost of water service. Some 227,000 customers in Philadelphia, or 4 out of 10 water accounts, are past due, while 50,000 delinquent customers in Detroit have had their water service terminated since the start of 2014, the study says. Households in Atlanta and Seattle are paying more than $300 a month for water and wastewater services (based on a family of four).
Should Americans who use more water, pay more?
Ultimately, the study says, governments, utilities, and consumers will need to work together to solve the growing affordability problem.
“Water is a fundamental right for all humans,” Mack says. “However, a growing number of people in the United States and globally face daily barriers to accessing clean, affordable water.”
The United States remains a relatively understudied country in international work on water affordability issues, she notes.
“The hope is that enhanced awareness of this issue in the developed world will highlight the severity of the issue, which is not isolated to people in the developing world,” Mack says.
Source: Michigan State University
