Drinking Water Injustice: Racial Disparity in Regulatory Enforcement of Safe Drinking Water Act Violations

Abstract

This study assessed regulatory enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) within the political-economic context that examined the impacts of community characteristics on length of time a water system remains in noncompliance with SDWA regulations. Our findings indicate that noncompliant water systems in counties with higher proportion of both Black and Hispanic residents take longer to be returned to compliance with the SDWA. Conversely, water systems serving a larger percentage of White residents are in noncompliance for shorter time period, and as the percent White in an area increases, time to compliance decreases. The findings indicate that minority communities are not given equal attention with respect to managing compliance with the SDWA. This study suggests that the legacy of racialized urban planning and long-term disinvestment in water infrastructure are responsible for the longer duration of water system noncompliance in areas with higher percentage of minority population.

Keywords

drinking water regulatory enforcement environmental injustice racial discrimination green criminology

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adler

F. H.

(1968). Black power. The Socialist Register, (5), 87–109. https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5271/2172

Allaire

Lall

(2018). National trends in drinking water quality violations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(9), 2078–2083. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719805115

Allison

D. P.

(1999). Multiple regression: A primer. Pine Forge Press.

Balazs

Morello-Frosch

Alan

Ray

(2011). Social disparities in nitrate-contaminated drinking water in california’s san joaquin valley. Environmental Health Perspectives, 119(9), 1272–1278. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1002878

Balazs

Ray

(2014). The drinking water disparities framework: On the origins and persistence of inequities in exposure. American Journal of Public Health, 104(4), 603–611. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301664

Bryant

(1995). Pollution prevention and participatory research as a methodology for environmental justice. Virginia Environmental Law Journal, 14(4), 589–613. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24782273

Bullard

R. D.

(1990). Dumping in dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality. Westview Press.

Bullard

R. D.

(2001). Environmental justice in the 21st century: Race still matters. Phylon (1960), 49(3), 151–171. https://doi.org/10.2307/3132626

Bullard

R. D.

Wright

(2012). The wrong complexion for protection: How the government response to disaster endangers african american communities. New York University Press.

10.

Burda

Harding

(2014). Environmental justice: Evidence from superfund cleanup durations. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 107(A), 380–401.

11.

Carrera

J. S.

Flowers

C. C.

(2018). Sanitation inequity and the cumulative effects of racism in colorblind public health policies. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 77(3–4), 941–967. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12242

12.

Clark

(2018). The poisoned city: Flint’s water and the American urban tragedy. Metropolitan Books.

13.

Cole

W. L.

Foster

S. R.

(2001). From the ground up: Environmental racism and the rise of the environmental justice movement. New York University Press.

14.

Connor

D. S.

Storper

(2020). The changing geography of social mobility in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(48), 30309–30317. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010222117

15.

DiAngelo

(2018). White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press.

16.

Fedinick

P. K.

Taylor

Roberts

(2019). Water Down Justice. Natural Resources Defense Council. 2019. Retrieved December 2. 2020. https://www.nrdc.org/resources/watered-down-justice

17.

Franz

(2011). Crimes against water: Non-enforcement of state water pollution laws. Crime, Law, and Social Change, 56, 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-011-9308-3

18.

Garrison

(2013). Funding to Improve Drinking Water Has Come at a Slow Drip. Log Angeles Times. Jun. 16. https://www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2013-jun-16-la-me-drinking-water-20130617-story.html

19.

González

(2019). Racial capitalism and nature. American Quarterly, 71(4), 1155–1167. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2019.0083

20.

Guinier

Torres

(2003). The Miner’s Canary: Enlisting race, resisting power, transforming democracy. Harvard University Press.

21.

Hamilton

T. J.

(1993). Politics and social costs: Estimating the impact of collective action on hazardous waste facilities. The Rand Journal of Economics, 24(1), 101–125. https://doi.org/10.2307/2555955

22.

Hamilton

T. J.

(1995). Testing for environmental racism: Prejudice, profits. Political Power? Journal of Policy Annual Management, 14(1), 107–132.

23.

Hanna-Attisha

LaChance

Sadler

R. C.

Schnepp

A. C.

(2016). Elevated blood lead levels in children associated with the flint drinking water crisis: A spatial analysis of risk and public health response. American Journal of Public Health, 106(2), 283–290. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303003

24.

Harvey

(1973). Social justice and the city. University of Georgia Press.

25.

Imperial

T. M.

(1999). Environmental justice and water pollution control: The clean water act construction grants program. Public Works Manage Policy, 4(2), 110–118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1087724X9942003

26.

Konisky

M. D.

(2009). Inequities in enforcement? Environmental justice and government behavior. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 28(1), 102–121. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.20404

27.

Konisky

M. D.

Reenock

(2013). Compliance bias and environmental (in) justice. The Journal of Politics, 75(2), 506–519. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381613000170

28.

Konisky

M. D.

Reenock

(2015). Evaluating fairness in environmental regulatory enforcement. In Konisky

M. D.

(Ed.), Failed promised: Evaluating the federal government’s response to environmental justice (pp. 173–204). Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

29.

Konisky

M. D.

Reenock

(2018). Regulatory enforcement, riskscapes, and environmental justice. Policy Studies Journal, 46(1), 7–36. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12203

30.

Konisky

M. D.

Reenock

Conley

(2021). Environmental injustice in clean water act enforcement: Racial and income disparities in inspection time. Environmental Research Letters, 16, 084020. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1225

31.

Konisky

M. D.

Schario

(2010). Examining environmental justice in facility-level regulatory enforcement. Social Science Quarterly, 9(3), 835–855. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00722.x

32.

Lauren

Sarango

Harlan

L. S.

(2018). Environmental justice and sustainable urban water systems: Community voices from selected cities in the United States. Northeastern University Press.

33.

Lavelle

Coyle

(1992). Unequal protection: The racial divide in environmental law. National Law Journal, 15(3), S1–12.

34.

Levine

R. J.

(2016). The privatization of political representation: Community-based organizations as nonelected neighborhood representatives. American Sociological Review, 81, 1251–1275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122416670655

35.

London

Fencl

Watterson

Jarin

Aranda

King

Pannu

Seaton

Firestone

Dawson

Nguyen

(2018). The struggle for water justice in California’s San Joaquin valley: A focus on disadvantaged unincorporated communities. UC Davis Center for Regional Change.

36.

Lynch

J. M.

(2016). The ecological distribution of community advantage and disadvantage: Power structures, political economy, communities, and green-state crime and justice. Critical Criminology, 24, 247–262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-016-9313-z

37.

Lynch

J. M.

Long

A. M.

Stretesky

B. P.

Barrett

L. K.

(2017a). Green criminology: Crime, justice, and the environment. University of California Press.

38.

Lynch

J. M.

Stretesky

B. P.

(2013). The distribution of water-monitoring organizations across states: Implications for community policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 36(1), 6–26. https://doi.org/10.1108/13639511311302452

39.

Lynch

J. M.

Stretesky

B. P.

Burns

G. R.

(2004a). Determinants of environmental law violation fines against oil refineries: Race, ethnicity, income, and aggregation effects. Society and Natural Resources, 17(4), 333–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920490278782

40.

Lynch

J. M.

Stretesky

B. P.

Burns

G. R.

(2004b). Slippery business: Race, class and legal determinants of penalties against petroleum refineries. Journal of Black Studies, 34(3), 421–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934703258756

41.

Lynch

J. M

Stretesky

B. P.

Long

A. M.

(2017b). The State and Green Crimes Related to Water Pollution and Ecological Additions: Water Pollution from Publicly Owned Water Treatment (POTW) Facilities across US States, a Green Criminological Analysis. Palgrave Communications (open access). https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201770

42.

Maantay

(2002). Zoning law, health, and environmental justice: What’s the connection? The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 30(4), 572–593. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-720x.2002.tb00427.x

43.

McDonald

J. Y.

Jones

E. N.

(2018). Drinking water violations and environmental justice in the United States, 2011–2015. American Journal of Public Health, 108(10), 1401–1407. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304621

44.

Mueller

T. J.

Gasteyer

(2021). The Widespread and Unjust Drinking Water and Clean Water Crisis in the United States. Nature Communications, 12(3544). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23898-z

45.

Omi

Winant

(2014). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.). Routledge.

46.

Pastor

Sadd

Hipp

(2001). Which came first? Toxic facilities, minority move-in, and environmental justice. Journal of Urban Affairs, 23(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2166.00072

47.

Pulido

(2016). Flint, environmental racism, and racial capitalism. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 27(3), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2016.1213013

48.

Pulido

(2017). Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism, and state-sanctioned violence. Progress in Human Geography, 41(4), 524–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516646495

49.

Ringquist

J. E.

(2005). Assessing evidence of environmental inequities: A meta-analysis. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 24(2), 223–247. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.20088

50.

Ritchie

Roser

(2021). Clean Water and Sanitation. OurWorldInData.org. https://ourworldindata.org/clean-water-sanitation’ [Online Resource] March 15, 2022

51.

Robinson

J. C.

(1983). Black marxism: The making of the black radical tradition. University of North Carolina Press.

52.

Rubin

(2013). Evaluating violations of drinking water regulations. Journal of American Water Resource Association, 105(3), E137–E147. https://doi.org/10.5942/jawwa.2013.105.0024

53.

Sampson

J. R.

(2017). Urban sustainability in an age of enduring inequalities: Advancing theory and ecometrics for the 21st-centruy city. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 114(34), 8957–8962. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614433114

54.

Sampson

J. R.

Winter

(2016). The racial ecology of lead poisoning: Toxic inequality in Chicago neighborhoods, 1995-2013. Du Bois Review, 13(2), 261–283. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X16000151

55.

Schaider

A. L.

Swetschinski

Campbell

Rudel

A. R.

(2019). Environmental justice and drinking water quality: Are there socioeconomic disparities in nitrate levels in U.S. drinking water? Environmental Health, 18(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-018-0442-6

56.

Scholz

T. J.

Wang

C. L.

(2006). Cooptation or transformation? Local policy networks and federal regulatory enforcement. American Journal of Political Science, 50(1), 81097. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00171.x

57.

Siegel

M. S.

(2019). What’s wrong with what we drink: Troubled water. St. Martin’s Press.

58.

Stillo

Gibson

(2017). Exposure to contaminated drinking water and health disparities in north Carolina. American Journal of Public Health, 107, 180–185. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303482

59.

Stretesky

B. P.

Lynch

J. M.

(1999). Environmental justice and the prediction of distance to accidental chemical releases in hillsborough county, Florida. Social Science Quarterly, 80(4), 830–846. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42864408

60.

Switzer

Teodoro

P. M.

(2018). Class, race, ethnicity, and justice in safe drinking water compliance. Social Science Quarterly, 99(2), 524–535. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12397

61.

Taylor

E. D.

(2014). Toxic communities: Environmental racism, industrial pollution, and residential mobility. New York University Press.

62.

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission (2017). The flint water crisis: Systemic racism through the lens of flint. Michigan Department of Civil Rights.

63.

U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (2016). 2012-2016 American community survey (ACS) 5-year data profile. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

64.

U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (2016). Drinking water action plan. Environmental Protection Agency.

65.

U.S. Water Alliance (2019). Closing the water access gap in the United States: A national action plan. U.S. Water Alliance.

66.

Vanderwarker

(2012). Water and environmental justice. In Christian-Smith

Gleick

(Eds.), A twenty-first century U.S. Water policy (pp. 52–89). Oxford University Press.

67.

Verba

Schlozman

K. L.

Brady

E. H.

(1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard University Press.

68.

Wilson

M. S.

Heaney

D. C.

Wilson

(2010). Governance structures and the lack of basic amenities: Can community engagement be effectively used to address environmental injustice in underserved black communities? Environmental Justice, 3(4), 124–133. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2010.0014

69.

Wilson

M. S.

Hutson

Mujahid

(2008). How planning and zoning contribute to inequitable development, neighborhood health, and environmental injustice. Environmental Justice, 1(4), 211–216. https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2008.0506

70.

Zahran

Donald

W. H.

Brody

D. S.

(2008). Rationality, inequity, and civic vitality: The distribution of treatment, storage, and disposal facilities in the southeast. Society and Natural Resources, 21(3), 179–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920701618195