Water Foresight Podcast
Examining the future of water through the lens of strategic foresight--anticipating, framing, and shaping your preferred future.
Water Foresight Podcast
The Madison Declaration and the Future of Water (Part 1)
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The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is 50 years old. Is it in good health or is it having a mid-life crisis? Do the successes of the SDWA define its "ceiling" or present a new "floor" for consideration? The Madison Declaration calls for an assessment of the future of drinking water throughout the United States. Dr. Manny Teodoro from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Katherine Sorensen from the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, and Dr. Chad Seidel, President of Corona Environmental Consulting provide insights into the Madison Declaration and what it means for the future of drinking water. Part 1 of the conversation kicks off Season 4 of the Water Foresight Podcast.
#water #WaterForesight #strategicforesight #foresight #futures @Aqualaurus
Aqualaris at the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Also, dr Katherine Sorensen, the Director of Research and Professor of Practice at the Kyle Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute at Arizona State University. And finally, dr Chad Siddell, president of Corona Environmental Consulting. Manny, catherine and Chad, welcome to the Water Foresight Podcast. It is a privilege to have each of you with us today. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2You bet Matt, great to be with you, glad to be here.
Speaker 3Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1Well, I have heard about the Declaration of Independence, maybe the Magna Carta and other famous documents, but now it has come to my attention that the three of you, plus others, have developed. What I've come to know is the Madison Declaration. What in the world is the Madison Declaration?
Speaker 2What in the world is the Madison Declaration.
Speaker 2The Madison Declaration is really a vision statement for the next 50 years of drinking water in the United States. I think that's probably the simplest and easiest way to put it. It's a product of the Water and Health Advisory Council, of which Chad and Catherine and I are all members, and I'm glad that you invoked some of those other famous declarations, because that's very much what we were trying to do with this declaration. If you have a chance to look at it, we are quite explicitly cribbing right from Thomas Jefferson here. There's a preamble, there's an indictment, there's a declaration and there's a pledge, and what we're really trying to do is articulate a vision for the next couple of generations. We're thinking out to the 100th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act and thinking about what drinking water policy ought to be in the United States. It's a way to sort of set priorities. We want to state priorities and guide policy and management decisions at every level.
Speaker 1Well, I thought that everything was just wonderful in the world of water. Everything was fine. We've got plenty of money, plenty of great thoughtful leaders, am I not correct? What are what? Why do we need a Madison Declaration? Um, is there something amiss?
Speaker 3You know, if you go back to the time before the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed, you know water quality was suspect in many community water systems across this country. Different locations had different problems with different contaminants. Water was just been very successful, so it's important to note that. So it's important to note that, but at the same time, it has done what day and age to a lack of investment in the other aspects of Safe Drinking Water Act that are important. So, while we can be assured that the water coming out of our taps is safe, the continual focus on investment in contaminants has led to a situation where we're not investing in aging water infrastructure, in the things that actually deliver water in the first place, and so I think we want to highlight this issue of relative risks and bring to the forefront the fact that, you know, all these things matter, not just contaminants, and if our systems are going to survive the next 50 years, we need to be very cognizant of where the risks are today.
Speaker 1I sense you're blaming Chad because it's the engineer's fault. Is that right, Chad?
Speaker 3Not at all.
Speaker 1All right, okay, all right, chad may agree.
Speaker 4Something to be said with that, in that, because we're able to find more and more things in water. As Catherine described, the drive of the Safe Drinking Water Act to identify and regulate contaminants is what it's predominantly achieving. So US EPA follows that approach with all the various mechanisms that the act provides, but it doesn't have any regard for what it takes to maintain the infrastructure. And without the infrastructure to supply the water, more and more water systems are becoming at risk of not being able to continue to provide water reliably. So when you open up the tap in the morning, there might not be water there, because we spent the money on trying to address more and more minute contaminant risks instead of the risk of the pipe failing that takes the water from the source to our tap.
Speaker 2So what I hear you say, I think collectively, our feeling is that Safe Drinking Water Act's overall framework was entirely appropriate for its time, 50 years ago, and that these structures and institutions that it created are not as well suited for the challenges we face today and, unfortunately, have in some ways created incentives and disincentives that don't align with our needs today. So that's what we're really trying to do, I think, in this declaration is call for a strategic realignment of our national priorities with respect to drinking water. You know, the challenges we have today are not the challenges we have had 50 years ago, and so we're really looking to sort of change the conversation and articulate a bold vision for how to do that articulate a bold vision for how to do that.
Speaker 1So the first 50 years of the Safe Drinking Water Act and let's say the success of the first 50 years has revealed perhaps Safe Drinking Water Act 2.0 challenges. I think, catherine, you said we're looking at pollutants. We're looking at trying to treat pollutants or contaminants that we need to take out of our water so that it's safe when we consume it. But, as Chad pointed out, that's great, but we need to remember that it just doesn't appear. Water doesn't appear. We have to go get it, we have to move it to a treatment plant, we've got to clean it and then move it to the house or the business. Is that kind of fair? Am I on the right track?
Infrastructure vs Contaminants Dilemma
Speaker 3Oh yeah, absolutely. And the timing here is interesting, right? So the Safe Drinking Water Act is about 50 years old and it was implemented at a time when our infrastructure across this country was much younger. You know, 50 years on now, you know we've really not been particularly responsible in the investment in aging water infrastructure Pipes generally water pipes you can expect them to last somewhere between 50 and 100 years. And so here we are, 50 years later, and we're starting to see whole systems fail because of the continual drive to invest in ever new contaminants, to the exclusion, in many cases, of investment in that infrastructure the pipes, the pumps, the reservoirs, all those things. So it's the tail wagging the dog to some degree. It's the tail wagging the dog to some degree. I think what we're advocating for is just a realignment of those priorities and a recognition that there are many risks in the provision of safe, clean tap water. They all need to be recognized in their relative importance.
Speaker 1Let me ask this question when people make declarations, oftentimes it is from a position, a moral position and this I don't want to get too philosophical. But what is underneath this declaration from a moral perspective, you want to tell me? Not that I'm leading you on, but maybe there is an environmental justice perspective that was not present in 1974. Is there a moral basis for the declaration? Why should we care about drinking water?
Speaker 4I like to frame it in the way that we have a simple objective we want to have safe, affordable and reliable drinking water for everywhere, for everybody, everywhere, all the time.
Speaker 4And unfortunately, even in the United States in today's day and age, 50 years into implementation of the Safe Drink Water Act, we still have millions of Americans that that do not have that, and it is a function of many drivers, several which we've already talked about. In large part, it's because smaller water systems can't keep up with the expectations of some of the contaminant driven expert or efforts, and also it just takes a lot of money and the investment that was made initially for those systems hasn't been sustained, and therefore they're getting to that 50 and 100 year mark that Catherine described and now starting to fail with their infrastructure. And so, unless we reframe our priorities as a country for what's important to us as drinking water, if we maintain the focus just on contaminants, it's more and more likely that communities that have less resources are going to fall farther and farther behind and fail in greater and greater rates, and so there's certainly an aspect of that. I think that's fundamental to what we want to try to accomplish.
Speaker 1I think that's fundamental to what we want to try to accomplish. It's not just a physical infrastructure aspect that matters. There's a moral, a human element to this. Is that fair Chad?
Speaker 4Yeah, public health. It really comes down to a public health mission. Drinking water is fundamentally a public health function and service and that public service is the highest calling and that's what our communities really need and deserve to be able to continue and to thrive.
Speaker 2But, matt, along with that, absolutely there is a moral call here as well. You know, normatively we all believe in efficiency. I don't think you're going to have anyone come out and argue against efficiency. We would like to see. When it comes to things like relative risk, we have limited public resources. We would like to see them devoted to the places where they're going to do the best and have the best bang for the public buck.
Speaker 2But I think there's also a very serious equity and moral dimension in the sense that the challenges we have with drinking water are not randomly or uniformly distributed across the country.
Speaker 2We have different challenges in different communities, but the data are very clear that where we have the most serious problems with drinking water systems are the places with lower incomes. They tend to be lower income racial or ethnic minority communities. They tend to be rural communities that often have all kinds of other challenges at the same time, with access to jobs, with access to economic growth, with other kinds of public services. These things pile on to each other, and water is the most basic of basic services. It is the infrastructure on which all other things rely. So, yeah, there's a moral dimension here and that's very much a part of the vision we're trying to articulate. And you know we're being more than a little bit bold with this declaration, because we're a small group. We have the ability to do that, and so we are claiming a little bit of moral authority and trying to call attention to these inequities and inefficiencies.
The Moral Imperative of Safe Water
Speaker 1Well, to whom is the Madison Declaration directed? Is it to general managers? Is it to legislators? You know our, our NGO friends, from you know, save the drinking water groups. To whom are you directing this declaration?
Speaker 3So I would say all of those, but at a really fundamental level, I would also say at the EPA right, at the administrators of the act, at the federal legislators who determine the laws of this nation under which the safe drinking water act functions.
Speaker 3We need these people to understand the importance of these relative risks. We need these people to understand that it doesn't matter how clean the water is if it can't get to the home or business in the first place. So we are, as Manny said, a small group and it is bold to take this on, because, of course, you open up yourself to the criticism that you are somehow in favor of contaminants and drinking water and that you don't care about them, and that you don't care about safe, clean water, and nothing could be further from the truth. This is a group of people who have dedicated their careers to ensuring that people have safe, clean water at the tap, but it's also a group of people who understand these relative risks and see community water systems across this country failing and want desperately to stop that. So, yeah, the audiences are the decision makers at the highest level and we hope to work with them and others to bring about meaningful change to make sure that we can continue to supply safe, clean water for the next 50 years.
Speaker 1So it's really a directive to decision makers. You're also suggesting that we're kind of all in this together. It takes leadership, but there's many dimensions to that. It's, at bottom, a moral imperative, but there are economic considerations, there are scientific considerations to achieving the objectives of the Declaration. Is that fair?
Speaker 3Yeah, and you know, I think it's important to recognize that it's really easy for federal legislators and for the administrators of the EPA to kind of fall into a trap as it relates to contaminants. So you know, a new contaminant comes to the forefront because technology has improved and we're now able to find it, whereas maybe before we couldn't even find it. Or we can detect it at levels that were undetectable before. Right, and it kind of puts them in a quandary, right, like who would be against removing said contaminant from drinking water? And it's hard to argue back. But that's why you have to understand the importance of relative risk. That's why that is so, so meaningful for our community water systems. Sure, we would all love to deliver, you know, 100% pure, reverse osmosis drinking water with absolutely zero contaminants.
Speaker 3That would be a lovely world, but it comes at a cost and it comes with trade-offs, and those trade-offs really matter, and so it's understandable that legislators and the administrators of the EPA you know their knee-jerk reaction is oh a contaminant, let's get rid of it. That's understandable, but that's why it takes people like us and other people from the wonderful water community to bring forward concerns about all the other things that are important in running these water systems.
Speaker 2And I'd like to emphasize that last point this is a declaration for everyone. Yes, of course, regulators are an important target audience here, but it's really everyone involved professionally in the water sector in any way Most obviously utility managers and staff operators and so on, but also their board members, legislators, everyone who's involved in making decisions for water and also for future generations. There's a reason that we framed this declaration in terms of the next 50 years. You know we've mentioned a couple of times the infrastructure that we invest in. These systems lasts for 50 to 100 years. People work in these organizations on much shorter cycles. Elected officials are on two to four year cycles.
Speaker 2Professionals are maybe on biennial budgets or maybe they're thinking about five to 10 to 20 years of their careers. These things are mismatched with the length of time that these assets are in place, and so what we really want to do is help people think in a truly long-term, multi-generational way. We hope that people are going to hold up this declaration for decades to come, when they think about making their own decisions for their utilities, for their communities, for their states, for the country, that they'll look at this declaration and think, huh, are we advancing things in ways that make sense according to this vision. So we are really speaking to also younger professionals at a moment when we all know that we're in a generational changeover across the water sector. So we really hope to inspire at the same time as we call for particular public policies for particular public policies.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think a lot of people Chad would probably not understand what Catherine was talking about, which is the pollutants that we speak of, that we want to remove. There's only about 90 under the Safe Drinking Water Act that are really addressed, and when you hop over to another federal law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, we have hundreds of thousands of chemicals, compounds, contaminants that are being reviewed and put out there all the time. Do people understand that? And does that message need to be part of this declaration that we need the scientists to think about how we're going to do this, how we're going to regulate contaminants, where we're going to be in 50 years, the costs involved in that? Just think about recent issues with PFAS right, how long that took to come to the forefront and where we are on that.
Relative Risks in Drinking Water
Speaker 4I absolutely agree that that question of how to understand and prioritize risks in drinking water is critical for us to be able to make the decisions about where we want to put our money in maintaining our water systems going forward, whether they're water utility directors or boards, or even Congress, for that matter, recognizing there are differences in the risks of things that might be faced in drinking water, and so I try to describe it. Envision you have a glass of water and that glass of water that you're holding in your hand today is likely very different than the glass of water you might have held in your hand 50 years ago or 50 years from now, and it can vary in terms of its relative risk based upon what's in it, the contaminants that might be in that water. We are most worried about microbial contaminants. Microbial contaminants are the reason why we started disinfecting and filtering water a century ago, one of the greatest public health accomplishments ever.
Speaker 4And then you can have chemical contaminants, some of which have acute impacts, meaning you get sick right away. Them are chronic, in most cases carcinogenic, where you may or may not have the impacts of that contaminant for quite some time decades. Epa estimates those things over 70 years. So when you think about the makeup of the risks that we face, the first and foremost that has to be maintained and addressed is the microbial contaminant risks, because those are the things that used to lead to us counting deaths per hundred in a given population. Now we can't even find specific deaths attributable to drinking water by and large in the US, in hundreds of thousands or even more than that, which is a credit to the drinking water community doing a great job, a great success yeah.
Speaker 4Absolutely so.
Speaker 4It can be very difficult in that mindset to address, as you described, an example with perfluorinated compounds where the risks attributed to PFAS again over a lifetime of not immediate and are oftentimes not even chronic to the point of death, but chronic to the point of decreased efficiency for vaccines, for example, one of the key drivers there.
Speaker 4So putting those two things in comparison of if we as water systems don't maintain our infrastructure and have an upset where there's microbial contamination that gets into your water, coming out of your tap and that can literally make you sick and hospitalize you and in some cases lead to death, which we've had cases of those examples in drinking water over the last 50 years, even with the Sanctuary Act in place versus you might have an impact from the exposure to that contaminant and drink of water, but you also likely have 10 to 100 times greater exposure to those things from other sources in your daily life, whether it's the food you eat, the house you live in or just the air that you breathe. And in that context we're advocating we prioritize the resources we put forth to maintaining our public health and risk protection on those things that are absolutely the most critical, which is a change in the paradigm because most of the time we're focusing our time and attention under the current Drinking Water Act on the things we know the least about that therefore probably seem the most scary and have the biggest boogeyman effect, because it could be there and it could be bad, but we don't really know about it All the while we're distracted away from the risks that we really know detrimentally impacted our communities until we directly address them and if we allow our infrastructure to fail, we're going to be back in that situation again. So that's the story that has to be better understood. The dentists are always good to say if you ignore your teeth, they will go away. It's kind of the same with drinking water systems If you ignore the drinking water systems, it will go away. And then you won't have it and you don't know the value of it until it's gone.
Speaker 1Well, manny, we've had a good overview of some of the issues that are near and dear to those of you that have developed the Madison Declaration. Let's take a few minutes and talk in this first episode, because it's going to take quite a bit of time to unpack the challenges and the vision that you've outlined here in the declaration. But what are the challenges that you've identified? And I think I have five of them and we can go through each one and talk about them and refine them so the audience understands exactly the key challenges that you guys have identified that the leadership in the world of water need to understand, harness and focus on to achieve success in the next 50 years. Is that fair?
Speaker 1Sure, yeah, well, you have all talked through these briefly, but the first one that you've listed is a regulatory treadmill, and I think Chad and Catherine have addressed some of these issues, but there seems to be, according to this challenge, a continuous search for, and subsequent regulation of, contaminants. Manny, tell us about this regulatory treadmill. Why is it a challenge and what's been our history with this regulatory treadmill?
Speaker 2Well, we've been talking about this quite a bit already. You know, one of the things I think that it's fun about and sort of brilliant about the way Thomas Jefferson structured the Declaration of Independence is it begins with what we now call the indictment right where we rattle off all of the crimes of King George and how outraged the colonists are. Well, this is not quite so severe, but this is where we are calling out the challenges. The regulatory treadmill is probably the thing we've talked about the most here. The Safe Drinking Water Act's fundamental structure is built around identifying and regulating contaminants. And you know, anyone who's studied any kind of basic microeconomics knows that there's a diminishing marginal return to anything. The first few contaminants that we identify have huge public health payoffs when we regulate them and treat for them. But as we identify more and more and more contaminants, the marginal health benefit you get from each of those contaminants declines to the point that you're getting very, very, very small public health payoff for ever increasingly costly investments in regulation. And that sort of leads to the problem of the next challenge, which is the missing risks. Because the Safe Drinking Water Act is focused on this regulatory treadmill that's identifying and regulating new contaminants all the time we're missing what we think are actually the much more serious threats to public health.
Underinvestment and System Failures
Speaker 2Catherine and Chad have been talking about these, so have I. Infrastructure failing infrastructure is a huge one. Premise plumbing workforce is a huge one that we haven't talked about. You know, the Safe Drinking Water Act just kind of assumes that workers exist and that skilled labor is out there. The lack of skilled labor is probably a much more severe threat to drinking water quality across the country than any exotic new contaminant. So there's all cybersecurity we haven't talked about. We haven't talked about. So the real problem with the regulatory treadmill is it sort of takes our eye off the ball because it has us focused on chasing these increasingly obscure contaminants and potential threats. Of course we always want to be vigilant. That's that's critical. There's always going to be new challenges. Critical there's always going to be new challenges. New contaminants can emerge, but we need to weigh the benefit of regulating those new contaminants against what we see as often much more important and immediate threats to public health.
Speaker 1So let me pose two questions, and maybe Catherine-.
Speaker 3I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want to double down there on a really important point, if that's OK. You know, local community water systems do not have a choice when it comes to the Safe Drinking Water Act. They have to do everything in their power to meet the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act, no matter what. And under the Safe Drinking Water Act there is a lead or head operator who literally will go to jail if the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act are not met or fail catastrophically. And so I want to put that in context. This is not like community water systems can go. You know we need, instead of putting our money into pfos, we really need to put our money into rehabilitating our main reservoir as an example.
Speaker 3They they can't and and that's an important part of how the regulatory treadmill functions and at times functions very much to the detriment of these systems.
Speaker 1Yeah, safe drinking water is not optional.
Speaker 3No, well, I mean. Nor should it be, of course, to Safe Drinking Water Act, and rehabilitating your largest main reservoir is probably, depending on the system, more important than addressing the latest contaminant du jour that we can now detect at lower and lower limits, which will be addressed at enormous cost with potentially marginal benefit.
Speaker 1Right Detecting. Chad would love to detect PFAS, but if there is no water flowing to create a sample to analyze, chad's going to be pretty bored. So fair points. The question I have, based on what you and Manny have just talked about the regulatory treadmill, if I hear you correctly is more than just simply looking at the next contaminant. Let's get to contaminant number 105, 110, and have debates over what the MCL is, what's the level at which we'll treat it. But it is more expansive than that. It is not just the contaminant, it is the cost of the infrastructure, it is the human resource aspect of this. There are also, as you pointed out earlier, maybe the moral and and justice-related aspects to that. So, if I hear you correctly, it's not simply drilling down on finding and evaluating and addressing the next contaminant, if I hear you correctly on that first point.
Speaker 1The second, perhaps surreptitious point I think you may be making and you can disagree with me, all three of you this challenge is called a regulatory treadmill. But is there an opportunity to do things that are not necessarily regulatory? Is that a challenge that needs reservoir my distribution system? I've got water loss. I don't have to wait for the EPA to necessarily tell me to do things. Is there a challenge? Maybe this is a framework block, if you will, in the world of water, where we don't have to wait for a regulation to tell us to do good things. Am I wrong?
Speaker 3Oh no, you're not, and that's an important thread to pull. I think one of the things that's interesting about the Safe Drinking Water Act is that I think, you know, one of the many reasons that it passed back, you know, 50 years ago was that across this country we broadly shared similar challenges and concerns with tap water. You know we broadly needed to address biological contaminants, as an example, e coli, the dreaded E coli right. Those types of challenges were common across the country and what's interesting about where we are today is that, because of the successes of the Safe Drinking Water Act because, you know, with very few exceptions, you know, we've addressed E coli and other biological contaminants that pose immediate harm to human health the challenges that remain are less broadly shared. You know, in some parts of the country, mine in particular, you know, one of our main concerns is just are we going to have water in the first place, right?
Speaker 1in the desert southwest.
Speaker 3And you know, we need to be investing our money in ensuring just availability of wet water, no matter what contaminants are in it.
Speaker 3as an example, Whereas you know, in other parts of the country their concerns are very different and I think that it's important to recognize that systems you know do differ in their challenges across this country and we need to find ways that to address those. Regulation can be one way to do it, but federal regulation really is most effective when you're facing shared problems and, I'm not sure, looking forward, that's where we're at. So we probably need to be more open-minded about ways to address these problems that don't stem necessarily from regulation and maybe depend instead on other types of governance mechanisms.
Speaker 2Yeah, Well, that's certainly, matt. Your question really gets at something bigger and connects to something bigger that you mentioned earlier, which is that the Safe Drinking Water Act in some ways has unfortunately and accidentally, become something of a moral framework. You know, one of the great ironies, and maybe the great tragedies, of the signal laws of the 1970s for water is that the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act in some ways accidentally created a culture of compliance within the water sector, as if our mission as water and sewer systems is to comply with the law. Now, all of us want to comply with the law. Compliance with the law is a good thing, these are good laws, but our goal is not simply regulatory compliance.
Small Systems Set Up to Fail
Speaker 2Hey, I stayed under the MCL. I can call it a day and go home, but unfortunately, almost everything we do in the water sector now is built around this idea of compliance. I like to think of it this way An MCL is a guardrail, it's not a target. We we want to think about the things that are most important to our communities, that's. That's the things we've been talking about right, safe, reliable, sustainable, affordable water. We want to do that in the, and the way that we get there, as catherine was suggesting, is going to be different in different places, so we want to be sensitive to that and not simply perpetuate this idea that your job as a utility leader is regulatory compliance. That's one small part of your job, but it shouldn't be the only thing we care about.
Speaker 1Right, right. Well, to continue your metaphor and analogy, if the Safe Drinking Water Act is a moral framework, does it establish the floor or the ceiling? And, as Catherine pointed out, there are many water leaders historically, currently and obviously in the future, that will look beyond the four corners of the Safe Drinking Water Act to say wait a minute. Here I'm seeing cybersecurity as an issue world that tells me what to do. There's no cookbook on that, but I'm going to take steps to prevent my system from being hijacked and ruining the quality of the water that I'm providing to my customers. Is that fair?
Speaker 4I love how you use the words is this about establishing a floor or establishing a ceiling or the bar that we try to meet, and I describe it as new drinking water regulations established under the Safe Drink Water Act are effectively raising the bar or the ceiling, and, by and large, water systems are able to achieve that, especially the larger ones, noting that out of the 50,000 community water systems that we have in this country, there are only a few hundred that serve more than 100,000 people, so we've got tens of thousands of very small water systems serving fewer than 10,000, even 1,000 people, than 10,000 even, or 1,000 people, and so when the bar is raised for a new contaminant, they are not only unable to achieve the new, higher bar, but they become more at risk at falling through the cracks in the floor of maintaining what was the not particularly described aspects of the Safe Drink Water Act expectations, which is operating and maintaining water supply, and because the act is really about the ceiling for contaminants, it can ignore what it takes to maintain the floor of continuing to provide water in the face of workforce shortages or infrastructure just decline and failure.
Speaker 4And so recognizing and reconciling those two aspects is really important for the next 50 years because, without having any regard for what it takes to maintain the floor of just operating a water system, raising the ceiling of the contaminant expectations within the act with contaminant by contaminant drinking water regulations leads us to a path where we expect more and more water systems to fail the floor, therefore not even be able to think about achieving the ceiling.
Speaker 1Let me ask this question.
Speaker 1It's a segue into the next challenge, which is missing risks, and Chad, based on some of the things you just mentioned, is the way that the Safe Drinking Water Act was developed.
Speaker 1In defining a community water system, is that in and of itself a risk to the success of the Safe Drinking Water Act? In other words, a community water system has a very low bar in terms of what is included. And you mentioned some large, like New York City or Chicago, that have hundreds of thousands of customers. But that's the same thing as a small mobile home park, right, that might have a great opportunity to achieve all those requirements, whether they're floor or ceiling. But then the other one is maybe we call it set up to fail, right? How can these smaller systems achieve these regulatory requirements? And is that something to consider over the next 50 years, as we think about the Madison Declaration, do we need to treat and maybe redefine how we think about systems in the world of water, allowing them to be successful, thinking about our first topic, which was the regulatory treadmill, and now, as we move forward, thinking about these risks? So that may be a difficult question to unpack, but I thought I'd ask it.
Speaker 4I like the way that you pose it. It's very much so a set up to fail situation for small water systems in today's day and age and age. So a community water system can be as small as a water source supplying water to 15 connections, like 15 homes or 25 people, and at that level depending upon where you're at and their local land development policies at the time over the last 50 to 100 years land development policies at the time over the last 50 to 100 years. There can be lots and lots of those little tiny places, or there can be interspersed small places with big places, but by and large, the smaller a water system is, the more likely it's not able to meet the compliance expectations under the Safe and Green Water Act, let alone the public health protection expectations of having a water system. And ultimately, you know what that community needs to have safe, affordable and reliable water into the future.
Speaker 4So as we crafted the declaration, we see that question and that challenge of scale as one that we as a water community really do have to overcome. We can't expect tens of thousands of tiny water systems to be able to maintain themselves well from an infrastructure perspective that isn't regulated and not always funded appropriately locally and certainly not federally, and so we have to find ways to help those systems come together and join other larger systems and just generally get bigger, because the bigger water systems get. Manny's research has done a great job showing once you get to about 20 000 people served you achieve the objectives of consistent, safe, affordable and reliable water. Now it's not without some examples of some challenges, but, man, if you're serving fewer than 20,000 people, you're really going to struggle to not only meet the Drinking Water Act expectations but just meet the expectations of doing what it takes to run an organization to reliably supply water in the face of the things that are changing in our world today.
Speaker 1Yeah, and nobody wants to go to jail, as Catherine has scared us all in that. Know my suggestion that maybe the Safe Drinking Water Act itself is driving these risks, or maybe the missing risks, as you've defined them, are symptoms of the development and implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last half century. But what are some of these other risks that we think we're missing? I know you've mentioned cybersecurity. We have the human resource challenge.
Speaker 3Reliable supply chain.
Speaker 1Reliable.
Speaker 3There you go, oh my heavens, yeah, I mean that is a lesson we learned during the COVID pandemic in particular. Before then, I had no idea how vulnerable our supply chains were. I remember the day during the COVID pandemic when the person in charge of safe drinking water compliance at the city of Phoenix came to me and stated that you know, some of our very important lab supplies were from China and that we had a two week supply. Supplies were from China and that we had a two week supply. And you know we were frantically running around trying to figure out how we were going to continue to meet safe drinking water standards without these very important components for our lab. And you know that was just the beginning. You know the chemical supply chain. You know lab components. You know all of these things.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3You know, boy, that is a really, really important risk, that you know. Frankly, back 50 years ago, I just I don't think it was relevant, but it is extremely relevant today.
Speaker 1Well, I think you're right. Covid did teach us quite a bit about the world of water, and I think there's a lot we can talk about when we get to some of those solutions. But the third challenge that you collectively have identified you've touched on it already is underinvestment.
Speaker 2Manny, what does underinvestment mean to you?
Speaker 2Well, it means that we haven't adequately invested in the facilities and the organizations that deliver this critical service.
Speaker 2And that is largely because, unlike other utility sectors, say telecom or energy, the water sector is mostly owned and operated by governments, and so elected officials who govern these systems are, on average, going to prioritize low prices, low rates, at the expense of the long-term health and viability of these systems.
Speaker 2So that's what we think is going on with underinvestment, and where it ties to the missing risks and the regulatory treadmill is that, you know, the Safe Drinking Water Act doesn't necessarily incentivize the kinds of ongoing investments that we all know are necessary to keep our systems efficient and effective and safe. So that main replacement program not sexy, not exciting, expensive, capital intensive, but absolutely critical for maintaining these systems. So this is the kind of thing the reservoir that Catherine was talking about earlier, the kind of thing, the reservoir that Catherine was talking about earlier just doing the basics day in, day out, not exciting but expensive. And we see we're not the first people to come along and point out that these systems have not received significant investment and we see a lot of disincentives out there for adequate investment that we think we need to address.
Speaker 1The municipal leader wants to be a municipal leader forever. The mayor wants to get reelected and certainly raising rates doesn't help with that sometimes. And also it's really not a good photo op for a mayor when you have a pipe that's four feet in the ground right. They want to have a photo op with a new park, a new fire station's four feet in the ground right. They want to have a photo op with a new park, a new fire station, a new traffic light, things that are visible. But a lot of times the voters, the constituents, they don't see the infrastructure that's all around us, the pipes in the ground valves you name?
Toward a Vision for the Next 50 Years
Speaker 2it. The systems are literally buried and so they're figuratively buried, and that's just a fundamental problem that we've got, and one of the things we need to address as a water sector is making these invisible systems more visible. You're absolutely right. Look, the day before a disaster, a failing water main looks exactly like an excellent water main. Yeah, it's only after the disaster occurs that there's a problem, that the problem becomes visible. So water is the thing that no one thinks about until it's the only thing you can think about, and that's led to the natural tendency for people and institutions to underinvest in these systems institutions to underinvest in these systems.
Speaker 1Well, underinvestment may lead to the issue that we talked about at the outset, which is the moral issue or a justice issue, catherine, is there injustice in the world of water?
Speaker 3Of water. Of course and you know, a lot of that has to do with scale and economies of scale it is just fundamentally more difficult to provide safe, clean drinking water in these very small systems, and those tend to be rural. Oftentimes it's compounded with rates of poverty that make it very difficult to invest in anything. So absolutely there is injustice. But that's why we really need to focus on these relative risks and the basics of what it takes to get water to people's taps and instead of forever chasing the next contaminant du jour. At times, the next contaminant du jour will be very important to address, but not always, and we need to get out of this mindset of continually chasing after them. And we, as Manny said, we need to get out of the mindset of this culture of compliance and really focus in on the things that matter and the ways that we can bring safe, clean water to tap in all communities, not just the large ones that can afford it.
Speaker 1Yeah, I know that as a consultant, chad needs more clients, right, but I thought it was brave in your section on injustice that you do reference the 100,000 non-community systems, which I think is important to point out that we not only have 50,000 community water systems, but we also have many other types of water systems regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act where we could have issues of risk and issues of injustice a school or a trailer park, things like that that often are out of sight, out of mind, when we talk about drinking water. One of the last issues that you have here, or the last issue, is opacity. That you have here, or the last issue is opacity. Now, that's not a term that you developed from the Clean Air Act, but the idea, manny, is that do we really understand as consumers, as citizens, do we really understand this system of drinking water? Your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2Yeah, this is such an important point because americans very poorly understand these systems that are keeping us alive every day. You know, every, every single one of us wakes up in the morning and interacts with our water system. Right, yet people have very little idea of how water systems work hydrologically, mechanically, let alone the organizations that operate them, the politics, the financing around water. We think that people need to understand these systems much better. You know, a long time ago, in 1996, when we had the Safe Drinking Water Act amendments, congress anticipated this problem. Look, they said. Look, people need to understand their water quality better, and so they introduced the Consumer Confidence Report and required utilities everywhere to publish water quality information to their communities. But I think it is widely acknowledged now that those consumer confidence reports at best fails to accomplish that goal and at worst there's significant evidence to suggest that those consumer confidence reports make people less confident in their water, even when they ought to be so we just need to do a better job of helping the public understand these critical systems.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, it may backfire. It may produce, as you put it, less confidence in. Is my water safe?
Speaker 3Yeah, and there's real tragedy in that, you know. Then, as a result of that, we see people who can least afford it go out and purchase much more expensive bottled water because they're afraid of relying on their tap water, even when their tap water is perfectly safe. And then you know, of course we have difficulty getting elected officials to increase water rates to reinvest, and part of the difficulty in getting elected officials to increase rates to reinvest is that people have lost confidence in these tap water systems and so it becomes just this vicious cycle that really harms the people who can least afford it, and we need to find a way to claw back out of that and stop that cycle.
Speaker 1Well, what I'd like to do on our next episode is talk through these challenges in light of the vision that you have collectively assembled through this declaration, and link these challenges with your vision and think about what it may mean for the next 50 years of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Will we see transformation? Will we just be sitting here in 50 years talking about how things are just business as usual, or will some of these issues just collapse and we'll have some real big challenges to address in 50 years? So I want to thank you, manny Catherine Chad, for your thoughts on this first episode and we will come back in our next episode and talk about those things. But in the meantime, catherine, manny Chad, tell us where folks can find you and if you've got any books that folks want to read, papers you published.
Speaker 2And, as we wrap this up, sure, you can find all my stuff at mannyteodorocom. In 2022, with Samantha Zolke and David Switzer, we published a book called the Profits of Distrust that has to do with that dynamic Catherine just talked about with the way distrust relates to bottled water use and so on. But you can find more than you ever wanted to know about utility management finance governance at MannyTiodorocom.
Speaker 1Wonderful Catherine.
Speaker 3I'm not nearly so organized as Manny, but I'm at the Kyle Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, and you can find all of us at wateradvisoryorg, which is the website for the Water and Health Advisory Council, on which we all serve.
Speaker 1Wonderful. And Chad, where can people find you?
Speaker 4Yeah, those Water and Health Advisory Council resources at wateradvisoryorg are a great start. Certainly want folks to go and check out the declaration there, sign on and support it If you agree with those key challenges and approaches to try to move things forward successfully. You can find me on exit Chad Seidel LinkedIn. Glad to connect with people that are interested in public health protection and drinking water because we all want to see 50 years from now, looking back at this point in time, really identifying and not just identifying but actually addressing and improving upon the way that we provide safe, affordable, reliable water for everybody everywhere all the time. I think we can pull it off. We just got to do it together.
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