Barriers to water infrastructure investment: Findings from a survey of U.S. local elected officials

Abstract

Investment in U.S. drinking water infrastructure is not keeping pace with need, contributing to water service failures that threaten public health, economic development, and community water security. Many explanations for lagging investment focus on the motivations of local elected officials, but those explanations are not rooted in research on elected officials’ own expressed views. We surveyed a representative nationwide sample of approximately 500 city and county officeholders about their perceptions of need for investment and barriers to meeting that need. Analysis of closed-ended and open-ended question responses reveals that the main barriers to investment are financial: incumbents weigh the cost of capital projects against the debt burden and affordability challenge created by those investments. Their concern about public opposition to rate increases is an important constraint on decisions to invest in water infrastructure. Our results also demonstrate disparities across communities in the perceived fiscal burden of water infrastructure. The great majority of elected officials expressed little concern about the condition of infrastructure in their own communities, but concern about infrastructure condition was positively correlated with concern about making investments, pointing to the financial stress for decision makers who bear the expense of deteriorating water systems.

Institutional Dynamics Impact the Response of Urban Socio‐Hydrologic Systems to Supply Challenges

“…When the operational capacity is not sufficient to buffer an environmental shock, increasing institutional costs, which increases the error threshold for action, reduces the robustness of a city's supply. This, alone, is a rather intuitive insight, especially when considering the litany of empirical evidence that institutional friction can prevent needed investments, which validates the UWIIM's novel institutional response mechanism (Crain & Oakley, 1995; Garcia et al., 2019; Hansen & Mullin, 2022; Muller, 2018). Additionally, all three cities reveal a threshold‐like behavior in the effect of institutional costs on system sensitivity (Figure 5).…”

“…Current approaches treat outputs from political‐economic processes as (a) parameters to be sampled (e.g., Gober et al., 2010; Koutiva & Makropoulos, 2016; Krueger et al., 2019; Rehan et al., 2015), (b) solutions to be optimized (e.g., Cohen & Herman, 2021; Kasprzyk et al., 2013; Trindade et al., 2020), or when they are endogenous, (c) outputs of strict decision rules that implicitly assume rational actor theory (e.g., Baeza et al., 2019; Bakarji et al., 2017; Kanta & Zechman, 2014; Muneepeerakul & Anderies, 2020) or (d) outputs of a single dynamical equation that ignores the layered networks of institutions responsible for filtering and translating information into action (e.g., Di Baldassarre et al., 2013; Elshafei et al., 2014; Garcia et al., 2016; Mazzoleni et al., 2021). Meanwhile, ample empirical evidence suggests that these outputs endogenously evolve with the socio‐hydrologic system (e.g., R. R. Brown et al., 2009; Garcia et al., 2019; Sullivan et al., 2017; Treuer et al., 2017) and are not necessarily reflective of rational, long‐term, goal‐directed behavior (e.g., Hansen & Mullin, 2022; Hornberger et al., 2015; Mullin & Hansen, 2022; Winz et al., 2009).…”

What People Learn About Drinking Water Disruptions From Local Newspapers

“…Ultimately, news coverage can affect the decisions of elected officials to invest in water infrastructure. Politicians often hesitate to support the rate increases needed to maintain a functioning infrastructure system out of concern about public opposition (Hansen & Mullin 2022). Because voters often cannot observe vulnerabilities that put water service at risk, politicians worry about being punished at the ballot box for making investments that require charging people more for water services.…”

“…Even in the face of investment need, local boards and officials who oversee municipal water systems may resist higher spending out of concern about public opposition (Hansen & Mullin 2022). With water system infrastructure situated largely out of sight, it can also be out of mind for those who live in the community.…”

Fiscal institutions and racial equity: Determining the price of water

“…Drinking water systems in the United States are primarily funded through user charges billed to customers of the system (Greer, 2020; Hansen & Mullin, 2022). Establishing the appropriate user charges needed to maintain viability is a core function of governing a water system carried out by municipalities, investor‐owned utilities, and single‐purpose districts.…”