Small systems, big challenges: review of small drinking water system governance

Abstract

Small drinking water systems (SDWS) are widely identified as presenting particular challenges for drinking water management and governance in industrialised nations because of their small customer base, geographic isolation, and limited human and financial capacity. Consequently, an increasing number and range of scholars have examined SDWS over the last 30 years. Much of this work has been technocentric in nature, focused on SDWS technologies and operations, with limited attention to how these systems are managed, governed, and situated within broader social and political–economic contexts. This review seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the governance dimensions of SDWS by drawing together existing literature relating to SDWS governance and exploring its key themes, research foci, and emerging directions. This overview is intended to provide guidance to scholars and practitioners interested in specific aspects of SDWS governance and a baseline against which researchers can position future work. The review identified 117 academic articles published in English-language journals between 1990 and 2016 that referred to some aspect of drinking water governance in small, rural, and Indigenous communities in industrialised nations. The articles’ content and bibliographic information were analysed to identify the locations, methods, journals, and themes included in research on SDWS governance. Further analysis of SDWS’ governance dimensions is organised around four questions identified as central to SDWS research: what governance challenges are experienced by SDWS, and what are their causes, solutions, and effects? Overall, the review revealed that the SDWS governance literature is piecemeal and fragmented, with few attempts to theorise SDWS governance or to engage in interdisciplinary, cross-jurisdictional conversations. The majority of articles examine North American SDWS, retain a technocratic orientation to drinking water governance, and are published in technical or industry journals. Such research tends to focus on the governance challenges SDWS face and proposed solutions to systems’ performance, capacity, and regulatory challenges. A small but growing number of studies examine the causal factors underpinning these governance challenges and their socio-spatially differentiated impacts on communities. Looking forward, the review argues for a more holistic, integrative approach to research on SDWS governance, building on a water governance framework.

Exposing the myths of household water insecurity in the global north: A critical review

“…Mismatched utility districts, municipal boundaries, and water service inclusion decisions can result in exclusion from the network (Pierce, Gonzalez, Roquemore, & Ferdman, 2019). Across North America and Europe, smaller systems tend to fail in providing universal water access more often than larger systems (McFarlane & Harris, 2018; Orru & Rothstein, 2015). In North Carolina, for example, the process of “underbounding” community water service districts is a legacy of racial segregationist policies that excluded African American communities from secure piped water and sewerage (Leker & MacDonald Gibson, 2018; MacDonald Gibson, DeFelice, Sebastian, & Leker, 2014).…”

“…Many of these studies caveat system performance by size. Structural disadvantage has created situations where smaller systems are not well supported in terms of financial, managerial, or technical capacity, thus impairing their ability to deliver sufficient and safe water and undermining trust of their customers (McFarlane & Harris, 2018; Scott, Moldogaziev, & Greer, 2018; Switzer & Teodoro, 2017; Switzer, Teodoro, & Karasik, 2016). For people without access to centralized water provision (13% of the U.S. population), households self‐supply from a domestic well or from an unregulated small system.…”

“…In taking a relational approach, research should target the array of water supply organizations (WSOs)-from community-level providers to large municipal utilities-and identify how organizations and actors reproduce practices that may perpetuate water insecurities. For example, too little is known about the relationship between small water operators and household water insecurity, in part due to inconsistent or absent data, reporting, or monitoring requirements (McFarlane & Harris, 2018). Small operators supply water to many low-income communities, yet they lack capital to improve infrastructure, draw from a limited workforce, and charge higher-than average water rates for less reliable service.…”

Water affordability and human right to water implications in California

“…We also address data reliability through sensitivity analyses of water bill and income data. These efforts facilitate the inclusion of smaller systems, where population counts are small but the challenges for safe water access are big [ 35 ].…”

Universal Access to Safe Drinking Water: Escaping the Traps of Non-Frugal Technologies

“…Decentralized systems for safe drinking water provision are an essential element in efforts to achieve Goal 6.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations ("drinking water for all"). This is mainly because centralized systems are non-existent in remote and scattered communities, mostly in developing countries [2,48,49]. The current paradigm considers that biological contamination is the most important problem in these communities due to the universal prevalence of pathogens [2,3,31,38].…”