The Hidden Racial Inequities of Water Access in America – GQ

Most Americans do not give a second thought to what happens after they turn on a faucet handle or flush a toilet. This is because the result is always the same: Clean, potable water comes out, available to drink, wash hands, cook food, clean clothes, or tidily dispose of waste, whatever the case may be.

Yet in many places throughout the country, running water is a scarce resource, or even an unattainable luxury. A report released earlier this week sheds new light on the scope of this phenomenon, and its conclusions are startling. More than two million people in the world's most prosperous democracy live without running water or modern plumbing. And although socioeconomic status correlates with water and wastewater services access, race is the single strongest predictor: African-American and Latinx households are almost twice as likely as white households to not have full indoor plumbing, while Native American households are about 19 times as likely, the report says. The researchers caution that given the challenges in obtaining accurate data from the groups most affected by the "water access gap," these figures may be undercounts.

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is perhaps the most infamous recent example of racial inequities in water access, where local officials' failure to adequately treat tap water exposed the city's nearly 100,000 residents, more than half of whom are black, to dangerous levels of lead and other contaminants. The problem is also acute in more remote or rural areas, including certain majority-black communities in the Deep South, majority-Latinx communities in California's Central Valley, and Native American reservations in the Southwest, among others. Nationwide, 17 percent of people in rural areas have had trouble obtaining potable water, and 12 percent have experienced problems with their sewage systems, according to the report. In some places, conditions are getting worse, not better. "In six states and Puerto Rico, we're going backwardsfewer people will have running water next year than this year," says George McGraw, the founder and CEO of DigDeep, a nonprofit that co-authored the report.

These racial and socioeconomic disparities are not an accident. In an effort to cut down on the dangers posed by waterborne diseases, Congress passed the Safe Water Drinking Act in 1974, a landmark statute that empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to set and enforce national standards for drinking-water-contaminant levels. And throughout most of the previous century, the federal government invested heavily in infrastructure, making water and wastewater services available in some of the nation's previously far-flung corners. Especially in cities and towns with higher population densities, this was a no-brainer investment in public health and economic productivity, and allowed utilities to provide high-quality water to consumers at relatively low prices.

This infrastructure boom, however, was not equal-opportunity. Cities and towns building out their systems would not always do so in majority-minority areas nearby. As the report documents, in the 1950s, the town of Zanesville, Ohio, did not build water lines in its African-American neighborhoods, and the following decade Roanoke, Virginia, did not extend its infrastructure to Hollins, a neighboring majority-black town. Discriminatory local government law practices also played a role: In the Central Valley of California, predominantly Latinx communities were discouraged from formally incorporating, which prevented them from accessing construction financing available to cities and towns. As a result, no one bothered to install a water system in the first place. Even today, there are places in the country where homes lack running water, within walking distance of neighborhoods that enjoy the full spectrum of water and sanitation services, says Zo Roller, senior program manager at the nonprofit U.S. Water Alliance, which also co-authored the report.

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The Hidden Racial Inequities of Water Access in America - GQ