But that is not where the majority of water utilities are located.
“Small” (serving 10,000 people or fewer) and “very small” (serving 500 people or fewer) water systems account for 97 percent of the total water utilities in the U.S, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Very small” water systems account for more than 55 percent of U.S. health-based violations, according to 2016 data from the EPA.
Texas and California have the highest number of “very small” system violations, mostly in rural areas.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the U.S. water distribution system loses nearly 15 percent of its treated water each day because of leaky, old pipes.
This proposal — which suggests financing infrastructural improvements through a reinvigoration of state funds, the establishment of a Federal Water Infrastructure Trust, and private funding — has gained increasing political currency on Capitol Hill.
Economies of scale will not improve conditions for those reliant on “small” and “very small” water systems.
Infrastructure expenditure can also include interventions at the “small scale.” While a complete overhaul of the national water supply systems would take too long and cost too much, there are other cheap and easy “point of use” solutions that would greatly improve quality of life for millions of Americans immediately.
Even using terms like “small” and “very small” for water systems that, taken together, supply more than 25 million people seems misleading, if not oxymoronic.
But perhaps the biggest paradox of them all must be how one of the world’s most developed nations could deny millions of people the basic human right to clean water.