Assessing the Effectiveness of Drinking Water Consolidation in Ensuring the Human Right to Water in California, USA

With the declaration of the Human Right to Water in 2012, California has been strategically enacting policies and allocating resources to ensure this fundamental right to all Californians. Reliable provision of drinking water can be hampered by barriers such as water scarcity, contamination, fiscal constraints, and natural or human-made hazards. Many of these challenges disproportionately burden historically marginalized communities which may also have limited power to affect change to their water supply systems. One method of ensuring water security for these underserved communities is through consolidation with a nearby water system. However, the promised benefits of consolidation (e.g., economies of scale, sharing of resources and expertise) are not always realized, which can leave underserved communities with short-term solutions and new water security challenges. In this work, we examine drinking water system consolidations within the state of California to determine whether consolidation has sufficiently provided reliable drinking water to these communities. We use data from the State Water Resources Control Board and the California Drinking Water Needs Assessment to assess the condition and characteristics of drinking water systems. These data show that consolidation receiving systems face lower rates of water supply risks in water quality, accessibility, affordability, and technical financial managerial capacity than non-consolidated systems and tend to be larger in area and population with higher connection density. Over half of all consolidations are motivated by water quality concerns, some of which persist after consolidation. Non-transient non-community water systems make up 17% of all drinking water systems in California but represent 23% of consolidated systems and continue to face post-consolidation risks at a higher proportion than other system types. While consolidation is sufficient to address many water supply challenges, these benefits are not universally experienced. More targeted funding and shorter consolidation timelines may improve universal access to drinking water within California.