Today in PLoS Water, a new analysis suggests that millions of US households struggle to pay for water and wastewater services because the cost of water utilities has increased substantially in recent years.
The study was based on data from 787 of the largest water utilities in the nation. Researchers used the metric of households spending more than 4.6% of their monthly income on 6,000 gallons of water per month, which is considered sufficient to meet basic household needs. The percentage is roughly equivalent to the pay from one workday.
A total of 17% of households, which included 28.3 million people, spent more than 4.6% of their monthly income on water services. That means an average of 1 in 7 households (15%) can't afford water services, the authors said.
In every community, there are households with unaffordable water services.
The researchers said their findings have wide public health implications, and the reasons behind the increasing water cost is varied but include climate change, aging infrastructure, and lower household incomes.
"We found household water affordability challenges in all utilities, states, and regions of the U.S. In every community, there are households with unaffordable water services even when using the most conservative definitions of undue hardship and volumes of water usage," the authors concluded. "While unaffordable water services are not geographically limited to specific states or regions, there are regional concentrations of unaffordability challenges in eastern regions, particularly within West Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana."