H173-05
Investigating the potential of consolidating water utilities to address water quality risks and population change in California, USA

Tuesday, 15 December 2020: 05:46
Virtual
Xin Lan, Michigan State University, Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, East Lansing, MI, United States, Laureline Josset, Columbia University of New York, Palisades, NY, United States, Maura Allaire, University of California Irvine, Urban Planning and Public Policy, Irvine, CA, United States and Upmanu Lall, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Between 2014 and 2018, 33% of the 2,785 water utilities operating in California reported health-based water quality violations, and 41% failed to comply with monitoring and reporting requirements. Further inspection of the Safe Drinking Water Information System shows that smaller utilities (i.e., serving up to 10,000 people) have a higher number of violations than larger systems.

Population change is another key factor. Reduction in inhabitants, which concerned 18% of the systems over 2014-2018, leads to reduced revenues, which exacerbate this noncompliance by limiting the utility’s ability to hire more staff, pay for more training or develop advanced technology.

The consolidation of water utilities in a larger system has been recognized as a solution for small systems to comply with quality regulations, keep relatively lower water rates, and diversify supply sources. The California State Water Board now encourages voluntary consolidations and even orders mandatory ones in some circumstances, however the occurrences remain rare, the drinking water crisis persists and is only to intensify in towns with receding population.

With this paper, we perform a state-level assessment of the potential of the various types of consolidation (e.g., direct acquisition, joint merger, balanced mergers) to address water quality issues and prevent future stresses due to decreasing revenues. Using a hierarchical clustering algorithm, we identify that 90% of small utilities having non-compliance with water quality criteria, 91% with monitoring and reporting issues, and 90% with decreasing population are candidates for managerial consolidation, i.e., sharing their financial, managerial or technical capacity. Though further analyses are required to evaluate feasibility, the results identify a centralized management with remote and distributed physical systems as a promising solution, all the more promising at a time of a pandemic.

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