Assessing Performance and Capacity of US Drinking Water Systems
Emily Bell, Katy Hansen, Megan Mullin
Abstract
Strong financial and operational underpinnings reduce risk to drinking water provision in the face of changing population, climate, and regulations. Because responsibility for oversight of drinking water systems in the United States is commonly divided across state agencies or subagencies, decision makers often are unable to assess a water system’s overall condition. Understanding correlations among different dimensions of performance is essential for assessing a water system’s ability to respond to stressors. We present a network-based method for characterizing multiple dimensions of a water system’s operations, combining data from several sources to describe the relationships between the dimensions within and across systems. Applying this method to North Carolina community water systems, we find that water systems face tradeoffs in balancing water affordability against the capacity to deliver drinking water reliably over the long term. Our approach can distinguish isolated water system vulnerabilities from those that signal more systemic challenges and help agencies responsible for water system compliance, funding, and planning coordinate their activities.