Monitoring the human right to water in California: development and implementation of a framework and data tool

Balazs, Carolina; Goddard, Jessica J.; Chang, C. C.; Zeise, Lauren; Faust, John B.

doi:10.2166/wp.2021.069

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…This may help governments target financial support for both at-risk systems and at-risk households within lower risk systems. This is particularly relevant in California, where the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment recently developed water system-level affordability indicators to support its 2012 Human Right to Water legislation [46,81,82]. This approach is likely to miss populations vulnerable to affordability challenges in urban areas with low community-wide ARs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative household water affordability metrics using water bill delinquency behavior

Skerker,

Verma,

Edwards

et al. 2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Rising water prices threaten affordable access to basic water service in the U.S., especially in low-income communities. Faced with unaffordable water bills, households may use less water than is healthy, forgo other essential services, or fall behind on water bill payments, risking water shutoffs. Affordability ratios (ARs), which express water bills as a fraction of income, are the most common measure of water affordability. However, ARs can underestimate unaffordability due to both spatial aggregation bias and their reliance on indirect proxies for ability to pay. New metrics are needed to identify households at risk of water insecurity due to affordability challenges. Here we investigate alternative water affordability metrics that use water bill late payments and debt to track actual payment behavior at the household level. We define metrics that capture the frequency, duration, and severity of water bill delinquency. We apply these metrics to a case study in Santa Cruz, California, using monthly billing data for approximately 40 000 households from 2009 through 2021. We find large variation in delinquency across households and over time, with higher delinquency linked to proxies for low wealth such as lower assessed home value. Census blocks with similar ARs often have distinct patterns of delinquency behavior, suggesting that block-level median affordability estimates may be masking sub-populations facing affordability challenges. These results highlight the benefits of using multiple, household-level metrics to capture the role affordability plays in household water security.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alternative household water affordability metrics using water bill delinquency behavior

Skerker,

Verma,

Edwards

et al. 2024

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…AB 685 states California's policy to ensure affordable drinking water access for all. It was passed in 2012 in the face of California droughts and inadequate access to safe and affordable drinking water in many parts of the state, but has been criticized for failing to provide for legal enforcement [23,25]. Prop.…”

Section: Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-hydrological impacts of rate design on water affordability during drought

Nayak,

Rachunok,

Thompson

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Unaffordable water threatens water access in the United States, particularly for low-income households. In water-scarce cities, water shortages during drought necessitate either expensive infrastructure development or costly emergency measures to meet demand, which can in turn increase water rates. Rate design plays a key role in determining whether these costs threaten water affordability for low-income households, but water utilities are often constrained by local and state policy in their ability to set progressive rates. Therefore, new approaches to assess the impact of rates on water affordability within the local legal and hydrological context are needed in drought-prone regions. To address this gap, we design a socio-hydrological modeling framework that fuses legal analysis, behavioral economics, and water resource systems modeling to assess the impacts of rate design on household water affordability. We demonstrate this framework in an illustrative application in Santa Cruz, California, where droughts threaten water supplies and California Proposition 218 deters public water utilities in setting progressive rate design. Our results demonstrate that legal constraints reduce affordability during droughts by limiting drought surcharge rate structures. This framework can help utilities design rates to improve water affordability in their socio-hydrological context and illuminate the impacts of state policy on affordability outcomes.

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“…Water is essential for all creatures on earth, and it has been suggested to be a human right [1]. However, millions of people still have not been able to access clean water all around the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Management Models and the Sustainability of Rural Water Supply Systems: An Analytical Investigation in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam

Toan

Hanh²,

Thu³

2023

Sustainability

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Clean water and sanitation is a global issue that has recently received special attention from governments and international organizations, as they essential to enhance people’s health and foster socio-economic development in different countries. Therefore, one of the United Nations’ Millennium Goals is to ensure access to safe drinking water for all as its target by 2030. However, ensuring water supply in rural regions, especially in developing countries, is a challenge. To meet the target, investing in infrastructure and maintaining the sustainability of water systems is crucial. This study takes into account the role of the management model of rural water supply systems and its relationship with the sustainability of the water systems. A weighing procedure for a sustainability assessment of rural water systems for the current study was proposed, then an ordered logit regression model was applied to examine the relationship between types of water system management models and the sustainability of the water systems in the context of Vietnam. The results from this study showed that type of management model had an influence on the sustainability of rural water supply systems, and the private management model was considered the one that significantly contributed to the sustainability of the rural water systems in the study area. The study provides some lessons learned for researchers in the field of rural water supply to select appropriate approaches to assess the sustainability of water systems and for policymakers to modify current policies toward more sustainable development of water infrastructure in the future, especially in developing countries.

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Monitoring the human right to water in California: development and implementation of a framework and data tool

Cited by 10 publications

References 45 publications

Alternative household water affordability metrics using water bill delinquency behavior

Alternative household water affordability metrics using water bill delinquency behavior

Socio-hydrological impacts of rate design on water affordability during drought

Management Models and the Sustainability of Rural Water Supply Systems: An Analytical Investigation in Ha Nam Province, Vietnam

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