6 research outputs found
Keep your head above water: Explaining disparities in local drinking water bills
Rising water bills across the U.S. underscore the need to understand the factors that contribute to disparities in local system bills. In this paper, we examine residential water bill amounts from 1,720 systems in four states in different regions of the U.S. (Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) to (1) examine how local system bills at a constant consumption level (4,000 gallons per month or 15.14m3) for drinking water vary within and across states, as well as within combined metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), and (2) study the relationship between local system bills and system-level characteristics. We find a high degree of similarity in median bill amounts between states but substantial variation within them at the MSA and local system scale. Our multivariate analysis suggests that municipally-owned systems are more likely to have lower water bills relative to for-profit systems, while factors such as purchasing water and having neighboring systems with high bills significantly correlate with higher water bills. Though we find that water systems with high levels of poverty tend to have higher water bills, our results also suggest that local systems that serve populations with higher levels of income inequality and higher proportions of non-White population tend to have lower water bills. These findings point to future research and data needs to better inform federal, state and local water affordability policy and underline the importance of examining and addressing water affordability at local scales
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Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge: Do They Matter for Support and Investment in Local Stormwater Infrastructure?
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Environmental Attitudes and Knowledge: Do They Matter for Support and Investment in Local Stormwater Infrastructure?
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University Stormwater Management within Urban Environmental Regulatory Regimes: Barriers to Progressivity or Opportunities to Innovate?
U.S. public university campuses are held directly responsible for compliance with many of the same federal- and state-level environmental regulations as cities, including stormwater management. While operating as 'cities within cities' in many respects, campuses face unique constraints in achieving stormwater regulatory compliance. To compare the abilities of campuses to comply with stormwater regulations to municipalities, we conduct mixed-methods research using primary data from five University of California (UC) campuses. Public universities constituted over 20% of California's "nontraditional" permittees under the municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) regulation regime in 2013. We utilize semi-structured interviews with campus and regulatory officials, a survey of campus students and staff around support and willingness to pay for innovative stormwater management, and content analysis of campus stormwater management documents to examine challenges to public university stormwater compliance. We find that, despite their progressive environmental practices in other areas like energy and water conservation, even as compared to cities, stormwater management practices on the evaluated campuses are constrained by several factors: infrastructure financing limitations, lack of transparent and coordinated decision-making, a lack of campus resident involvement, and regulatory inflexibility. Our study provides new insights, both for understanding campuses as sustainable 'cities within cities' and more broadly for urban environmental compliance regimes globally
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University Stormwater Management within Urban Environmental Regulatory Regimes: Barriers to Progressivity or Opportunities to Innovate?
U.S. public university campuses are held directly responsible for compliance with many of the same federal- and state-level environmental regulations as cities, including stormwater management. While operating as 'cities within cities' in many respects, campuses face unique constraints in achieving stormwater regulatory compliance. To compare the abilities of campuses to comply with stormwater regulations to municipalities, we conduct mixed-methods research using primary data from five University of California (UC) campuses. Public universities constituted over 20% of California's "nontraditional" permittees under the municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) regulation regime in 2013. We utilize semi-structured interviews with campus and regulatory officials, a survey of campus students and staff around support and willingness to pay for innovative stormwater management, and content analysis of campus stormwater management documents to examine challenges to public university stormwater compliance. We find that, despite their progressive environmental practices in other areas like energy and water conservation, even as compared to cities, stormwater management practices on the evaluated campuses are constrained by several factors: infrastructure financing limitations, lack of transparent and coordinated decision-making, a lack of campus resident involvement, and regulatory inflexibility. Our study provides new insights, both for understanding campuses as sustainable 'cities within cities' and more broadly for urban environmental compliance regimes globally