ObjectivePast research yields inconsistent evidence of disparities in environmental quality by socioeconomic status (SES), race, and/or ethnicity. Since the political significance of race/ethnicity may be contingent upon SES, this study advances environmental justice research by examining interactively the effects of race, ethnicity, and SES on environmental quality.MethodsWe match 2010–2013 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) compliance records with demographic and economic data for U.S. local government water utilities serving populations greater than 1,000. Statistical regression isolates direct and interactive relationships between communities’ racial/ethnic populations, SES, and SDWA compliance.ResultsWe find that community racial/ethnic composition predicts drinking water quality, but also that SES conditions the effect; specifically, black and Hispanic populations most strongly predict SDWA violations in low‐SES communities.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the importance of analyzing race, ethnicity, and SES interactively in environmental justice research. Results also carry troubling implications for drinking water quality in the United States.

National utility data show Safe Drinking Water Act violations are greater in low‐income communities with higher black and Hispanic populations.

David Switzer is a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University. His work examines how context moderates the effect of organizational structures on performance. He is specifically interested in how factors external to organizations, such as citizen participation and human capital, differentially impact the decision making and performance of private and public organizations. His empirical focus is on environmental policy, investigating how privatization, context, and citizen engagement affect the implementation of environmental policy. Manuel P. Teodoro is associate professor at Texas A&M University. His public administration research emphasizes executive behavior, with attention to professions and career systems as political phenomena. His policy research focuses on environmental policy and the ways in which human capital, management, and political institutions condition the implementation of environmental regulations. He also pursues a line of applied research on utility finance and management and has developed advanced methods for assessing rate equity and affordability.Abstract : This article advances a resource endowment theory of human capital and performance in government organizations. Building on research on human capital and firm location in business economics and task complexity in public management, the authors argue that an agency ' s ability to implement policy is determined both by its scale and by the human capital of the population from which it draws its employees. The authors cast labor as a factor of production in public agencies and argue that access to higher-quality labor improves government effectiveness. The effect of human capital on performance is especially pronounced when agencies are charged with the implementation of technically complex tasks. The empirical subject is U.S. municipal water utilities' compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. Comparing records of compliance with more and less complex regulatory requirements provides evidence consistent with the general model. The findings carry important implications for public management and policy design. Practitioner Points• A public agency ' s performance is partly a function of the availability of human capital-that is, educated workers-in the labor market from which it draws workers. • Larger organizations can leverage available human capital more effectively than smaller organizations. • The effect of human capital resource availability on performance depends on the complexity of an agency ' s task: as task complexity increases, so does the importance of human capital for agency performance. • Agencies that operate in isolated or low human capital labor markets face exceptional challenges in executing complex tasks. • Managers of smaller agencies seeking to improve performance should look for opportunities to scale up human capital development through collaboration and/or consolidation.

This study investigates the implementation of U.S. environmental protection laws under American Indian tribal governance. The landmark laws of the 1970s that form the core of America's environmental policy regime made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and the subsequent research literature on environmental policy has given them little attention. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has primary implementation responsibility for environmental protection laws on tribal lands, which offers a unique opportunity to study direct federal implementation apart from typical joint state–federal implementation. Further, because Indian reservations are homes to a disproportionately poor, historically subjugated racial group, analysis of environmental programs on tribal lands offers a unique perspective on environmental justice. We analyze enforcement of and compliance with the Clean Water Act (CWA) and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to compare the implementation of environmental policy on tribal lands with nontribal facilities. Analysis reveals that, compared with nontribal facilities, tribal facilities experience less rigorous CWA and SDWA enforcement and are more likely to violate these laws.

Literature in environmental public opinion has recently focused on the linkages between biophysical conditions and opinion formation. Where environmental issues and weather are more severe, individuals have been shown to have greater perception of environmental risk and greater support for environmental protection. Perceptions, however, do not always reflect actual weather, and perceptions may actually matter more when it comes to the formation of opinions. This paper explores this possibility in the context of drought, examining what variables determine individual awareness of drought and further exploring how drought awareness influences risk perception and policy preferences. Using data from two nationally representative probability-based panel surveys, as well as data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, the analysis indicates that while drought severity is the largest predictor of drought awareness, ideological and demographic variables also play a role. Importantly, drought awareness is actually a stronger predictor of concern for water shortages and support for water policy than drought severity, showing that understanding what determines drought awareness may be crucial for building policy support.