Talk:Water supply and sanitation in the United States

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Merge from Water Supply Sustainability
I proposed to merge content from the Water Supply Sustainability into the Service provision section. The former article is hardly notable as standalone and describes rather an all-U.S. water management concept than a unique or regional one. --Futurano 08:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. However, I believe that the article Water Supply Sustainability does not belong in that section and does not add relevant information to the article Water supply and sanitation in the United States.--Mschiffler 00:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I could agree. Where else could we put it? Or is it basically unnotable as a piece of text? --Futurano 11:20, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I prodded the article and it was deleted ... my reason was that the article merely addressed one specific definition of a rather broad concept – Wikipedia is not a dictionary. An article on the concept of water supply sustainability may be worthwhile, but one on sustainability as defined and implemented by a single regional governmental body is unnecessary. Cheers, Black Falcon (Talk) 16:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Good decision.--Mschiffler 22:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Billing Errors
Portland, Oregon had a rather nasty situation recently where the water utility discovered that they had been billing customers incorrectly for years. Customers were being surprised by very large bills (in the thousands of dollars in some cases) that were unexpected and due immediately. The billing software was blamed. I just read today about what looks like exactly the same kind of problem occurring in Indian River County, Florida. Why did Indian River County woman get $1,500 water bill? Is this worth a mention in the current article? SkyDot 10:08, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I have added a section on billing accuracty to the article. Thanks for raising the issues.--Mschiffler 22:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new structure
I would like to propose to restructure the article along the following lines to better highlight waht are the important issues and to improve the flow of the article. Comments welcome.--Mschiffler (talk) 05:06, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

1. Technical overview 2. Institutional overview
 * 1.1 Infrastructure and access
 * 1.3 Water sources
 * 1.4 Water use


 * 2.1 Service providers
 * 2.2 Regulators
 * 2.3 Other stakeholders

3. Challenges


 * 3.1 Water scarcity
 * 3.2 Pollution
 * 3.3 Investment Gap
 * 3.4 Affordability
 * 3.5 Retiring workforce

4. Responses to challenges


 * 4.1 Demand-side management
 * 4.2 Supply-side management
 * 4.3 Pollution control
 * 4.4 Federal financial assistance


 * I have no objection, especially if this will mean curing the deficiencies that have been identified above, some of which do not speak to structure per se. This looks like a pretty major rewriting of the article. How long do you think it may take, given the amount of time you are able to spend on it? Please inform me if you decide to proceed. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 15:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I just rewrote the article using the above structure. However, it still needs more work, and it should be completed by the end of March at the latest, as mentioned before. I plan to focus on structure and substance. Help on modifying the style of references would be especially appreciated, as are comments on substance.--Mschiffler (talk) 04:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Will take a bit to digest all this. Looks like an improvement at a glance. As long as revisions/improvements continue, I have no plans to end this review before end of March. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 12:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * All right. I have limited access to e-mail for the next 10 days and will get back to working on the article in the last week of March. Looking forward to comments on the new structure. The article still needs more work, esp. in the section on response to challenges which should also include some information on how some of these challenges were addressed, and to in some cases to a large extent resolved, in the past.--Mschiffler (talk) 13:02, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Non-English sources
Perhaps the following from WP:Verifiability may be of some assistance concerning the French and German sources:


 * Non-English sources


 * Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality, so that readers can easily verify that the source material has been used correctly. Where editors translate any direct quote, they should quote the relevant portion of the original, non-English text in a footnote or in the article. Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations made by Wikipedia editors. [bold font added] Mervyn Emrys (talk) 01:34, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

GA Review passed
Much improved organization and references more readible. Waited until end of March to give nominator time to make changes. A lot of effort, but the result is creditable. Not a feature article yet, but we don't demand perfection for GA (never did). Some repetition remains about State Revolving Funds but expect this will get cleared up with time. It's "better than the average bear," and a credit to the nominator. Well done. Mervyn Emrys (talk) 00:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Quality?
From the article:
 * but generally drinking water quality in the U.S. is good.

Does this mean "just potable" or does it mean "not life threatening"? My experience of tap water in the USA has been horrid (admittingly after visiting only a dozen cities or so) - it has a foul taste and just about usable for brushing one's teeth, but no more.

If the water quality in the U.S. is good, what about the rest of the world? One shudders. All the best 157.157.70.111 (talk) 20:05, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Water Reuse
This article does not cover the actual REUSE of water as a source of potable water, only the use of reclaimed (gray) water for such non-potable uses as irrigation.

A number of cities in the U S further process gray water and allow it to percolate from lakes and ponds into the underlying aquifer. For example, Payson, AZ pumps only about one gallon of new water for every three or four flowing in the mains. Unfortunately, this comment applies to only about one-third of the overall, the rest going to local golf courses, moistly commercial (pun intended). Check the Green Valley Project, Payson, AZ.
 * Good point. Feel free to add this information to the section on reuse. Some people refer to reuse when water is reused for a different purpose and recycling when it is reused for the same purpose, but the distinction is blurred. One could also think about creating a new article "Water reuse in the United States" if the section should get too long. Just an idea. If you need help on how to do this, let me know.--Mschiffler (talk) 13:14, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Rename
I'm seeing a lot of pages linking to here while talking about industrial water use. Perhaps the name should be changed to reflect the focus on tap water. Like 'Potable water supply and sanitation in the US' or something. Wikipedia also needs more information about industrial water use, either as a section of this page or a separate page. The whole issue of water use in the US needs to be better organized, though I'm not really sure where to start. IDK112 (talk) 03:52, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * You have a point. I would be in favor of creating a separate page on industrial water use in the US and to change the name of this page to 'Drinking water supply and sanitation in the US'. Ideally there would also be an article on irrigation in the US and an 'umbrella article' on 'Water resources management in the US'. This would be in line with the structure of water-related articles on some other countries (e.g. Brazil, Peru, Mexico).--Mschiffler (talk) 13:30, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Better to call it 'Residential water' or 'potable' water than drinking water, as this water is used for purposes besides drinking, although I guess the potable water currently redirects to drinking water so I guess it could work. I think this should be done soon. II  | (t - c) 18:15, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and renamed the article. Now that the title specifies drinking water, however, it is really necessary to include sanitation? That seems pretty well implied. II  | (t - c) 18:32, 20 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Why do you say that "sanitation" is implied in drinking water and could therefore be dropped from the title? I strongly oppose that. These sets of articles are also dealing with wastewater treatment, which is part of sanitation. I actually think it's a pity that this article has been renamed. You are aware that there are about 100 articles for other countries that are all called "water supply and sanitation in... ". See here (list): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_water_supply_and_sanitation_by_country or here (category): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Water_supply_and_sanitation_by_country EvMsmile (talk) 08:13, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Update notice
Moving the following from the article (I did not write it). -- Beland (talk) 18:09, 18 May 2013 (UTC)


 * This article has last been comprehensively updated in August 2010. Nevertheless, some of the information may be older, because the sources quoted are older. Please feel free to further update the article if need be.

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Adding information on reuse activities
I am going to move to this article a large chunk of examples of wastewater reuse in the U.S. It comes from the article on reclaimed water where it was taking up way too much room. If you find it is too much here as well, feel free to cull it or condense it or to suggest to me how else to deal with it. EMsmile (talk) 12:02, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

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Some Proposed Changes
Hello, I am employed by Boston University's Fineman & Pappas Law Libraries. After reviewing this Wikipedia page, I believe that information from one of our faculty's scholarship might provide a valuable addition to this page. I would appreciate it if this requested edit could be reviewed.

Add to second paragraph of Pollution section: "According to the 2015 US census, one-fifth of all households are not connected to a community sewer system." 21 million people were at risk of drinking contaminated water that did not meet water quality standards in 2015, alone, as 9% of water systems were reported as having water quality violations. Cf2022 (talk) 18:36, 24 January 2021 (UTC)Cf2022


 * @EMsmile, you might want to look at this one, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 9 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Applied in spirit, but in a different spot with a different source. This information is better placed a few paragraphs later in the same section, opening up the "Drinking Water Quality" section. And, @Cf2022, I'm afraid your faculty member is not the best source for this information - it appears to be accurate and correct, but her article doesn't cite its sources, which appears to be the PNAS journal article I have linked instead. This adds some more details on the sampling - it's 9% of systems that covered 500 or more people, out of an assumption that small water systems are likely to have bad reporting - which, frankly, means it's an optimistic number. Good information to add, but I'd rather cite the drinking water study than an article by a person with closely-related expertise reporting, uncited, on the same study. Kistaro Windrider (talk) 22:46, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Too little content on wastewater infrastructure and regulation?
I feel that this article falls a bit short with regards to the topic of wastewater treatment. The main focus seems to be on water supply. The reason why I am asking because I am working on the article wastewater treatment which has the US in its country examples. I would prefer to move that content to here and then place an excerpt at the other article. Why do you think of that suggestion? The text block that could be moved to here is this:

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state environmental agencies set wastewater standards under the Clean Water Act. Point sources must obtain surface water discharge permits through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Point sources include industrial facilities, municipal governments (sewage treatment plants and storm sewer systems), other government facilities such as military bases, and some agricultural facilities, such as animal feedlots.

EPA sets basic national wastewater standards:


 * The "Secondary Treatment Regulation" applies to municipal sewage treatment plants, and
 * Effluent guidelines are regulations for categories of industrial facilities.

These standards are incorporated into the permits, which may include additional treatment requirements for individual plants developed on a case-by-case basis. NPDES permits must be renewed every five years. EPA has authorized 47 state agencies to issue and enforce NPDES permits. EPA regional offices issue permits for the rest of the country.

Wastewater discharges to groundwater are regulated by the Underground Injection Control Program (UIC) under the Safe Drinking Water Act. UIC permits are issued by 34 state agencies and EPA regional offices.

Financial assistance for improvements to sewage treatment facilities is available to state and local governments through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, a low interest loan program. EMsmile (talk) 04:30, 26 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Agree. Of course, I wrote that stuff... :^) Originally I added it in water treatment; later it was moved to wastewater treatment. Additionally, the "History" section in this article discusses municipal/sewage treatment, but not industrial wastewater. There is some text on that topic that I wrote for Water pollution in the United States that could be added here. Moreau1 (talk) 00:19, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll move it across now and leave something behind at wastewater treatment. I just find that very often, the United States is used in the "examples" section of general articles, like "wastewater treatment", which then reinforces the bias towards US and Europe that we have in so many Wikipedia articles. So I don't think it should get more space than other countries at wastewater treatment. EMsmile (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * OK done. @Moreau1 please check if you like how I have changed things, also at wastewater treatment? Do you agree with how I used the excerpt function? EMsmile (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Added information about rainwater harvesting
I added some information about rainwater harvesting (moved from rainwater harvesting). This could now be expanded and updated. There are two countries so far that have separate articles for rainwater harvesting: Canada and the UK. EMsmile (talk) 00:55, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

New Additions to Article
I’m interested in this topic of water supply and sanitation because I want to understand how this issue contributes to environmental racism. At first glance, this issue may not seem too complex, but areas that lack clean water are often home to Black and low-income households. When looking at the current article on this topic, there is a lot of information regarding the water system infrastructure currently in place, but there is not that much information regarding racial implications of this problem. I would continue to expand on this and incorporate information about the Flint water crisis as well as Benton Harbor and many other places to allow others to see this issue through a different lens. Feel free to learn more about my additions on my talk page.

--Zachre Andrews (talk) 15:58, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

More Updates to Article
I plan to continue growing this idea! I have included some more specific ideas on my user talk page. If you are interested in learning more about my ideas, you can read my proposal here.

New Section "Access" - Feedback
1.	First, what does the article do well? Is there anything from your review that impressed you? Any turn of phrase that described the subject in a clear way? The article is very comprehensive. It has an impressive amount of detail and a long list of sources (far above the requirement). It very thoroughly covers the disparities in access to a clean water supply, how that manifests itself in different regions, and the lack of funding for new water infrastructure. It has good short, section titles that go straight to the point. It also has strong organization; the division of the sections makes sense.

2.	What changes would you suggest the author make to the article? Why would those changes be an improvement? (Draw from your comments in this form in making these suggestions)

1)	Could use a sentence that summarizes what the access section will cover and mentions disparities in water access rather than just a fact about how many people lacked access to drinking water

2)	Different header sizes may be useful – there should be a larger heading for “Affected Regions across the United States” and “Lack of Funding” to help differentiate the sections about different regions from the other sections

3)	The lead section should be updated to include a couple sentences on disparities in access to water

4)	Fix the sentence in the lead with a missing citation

5)	Perhaps add a couple more recent sources/studies from the last 3-4 years

6)	Work on making the article appear more neutral – take out any sentences that give your own view and are not backed up by factual evidence (i.e. “it is essential to examine the past…”

7)	Other sentences need to have studies/evidence that proves the claims you’re making i.e. “these specific communities were ignored, evident through the creation of new laws and regulations” – instead, just explain the laws and regulations that showed those communities were ignored

8)	Fix minor grammar issues

9)	Add images to make the article more interesting and reader-friendly

3.	What are the most important things the writer could do to improve the article(s)? They could make the article appear more neutral, add information about access to the lead, slightly change the formatting, update some studies, and fix some small grammar issues.

SarahD12345678910 (talk) 17:00, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Revisions Peer Review
I liked the structure of the “Access” section, and the way you delved into the historical causes of lack of access and specific affected areas made the section comprehensive. I also appreciated how you added an extensive list of scholarly sources. You also maintained neutrality for the most part and your points were clearly backed up by studies referenced in the sources, though more could be used in some key areas where you discuss how structural racism has resulted in this lack of access. The areas you could add to to improve your contribution would be: adding lack of access to clean water as an issue in the article’s lead, improving the flow of the “Access” section’s lead, adding references to related concepts such as environmental justice and environmental racism, bulking up the “Lack of funding” subsection, avoiding passive voice sentences, incorporating more sources to maintain neutrality, and adding illustrations. This would improve the depth and readability of the article. Amykuriakose (talk) 04:11, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Possible groundwater regulation content
I've just removed this textblock from groundwater as I found it overly detailed for such a high level overview article. Also it's poorly sourced and outdated. Perhaps there is something in it that could be salvaged for this article?

+++++++++++ In the United States, laws regarding ownership and use of groundwater are generally state laws. Regulation of groundwater to minimize pollution of groundwater is addressed in both state and federal law; in the latter case, through regulations issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).


 * The Rule of Capture, based on English common law, provides each landowner the ability to capture as much groundwater as they can put to a beneficial use, but they are not guaranteed any set amount of water. As a result, well-owners are not liable to other landowners for taking water from beneath their land. State laws or regulations will often define "beneficial use", and sometimes place other limits, such as disallowing groundwater extraction which causes subsidence on neighboring property.
 * Limited private ownership rights similar to riparian rights in a surface stream. The amount of groundwater right is based on the size of the surface area where each landowner gets a corresponding amount of the available water. Once adjudicated, the maximum amount of the water right is set, but the right can be decreased if the total amount of available water decreases as is likely during a drought. Landowners may sue others for encroaching upon their groundwater rights, and water pumped for use on the overlying land takes preference over water pumped for use off the land.
 * The Reasonable use rule in American drainage law does not guarantee the landowner a set amount of water, but allows unlimited extraction as long as the result does not unreasonably damage other wells or the aquifer system. Usually this rule gives great weight to historical uses and prevents new uses that interfere with the prior use.
 * EPA published its "groundwater Rule", applicable to public water systems, in 2006. The rule focuses on groundwater-supplied systems that may be subject to contamination from fecal bacteria, and requires such systems to take corrective action.
 * In real estate property transactions both groundwater and soil are the subjects of scrutiny. For brownfields sites (formerly contaminated sites that have been remediated), EPA requires preparation of Phase I Environmental Site Assessments, to investigate and disclose potential pollution issues. In the San Fernando Valley of California, real estate contracts for property transfer below the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) and eastward have clauses releasing the seller from liability for groundwater contamination consequences from existing or future pollution of the Valley Aquifer. EMsmile (talk) 13:45, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

EMsmile (talk) 13:45, 26 January 2023 (UTC)