essay on drinking water crisis

Essay on Water Crisis 500+ Words

Water, a life-sustaining resource, is essential for all living creatures on Earth. However, a water crisis is emerging as one of the most significant challenges humanity faces today. In this essay, we will explore the water crisis, its causes and consequences, and the critical need for sustainable solutions to ensure a better future for our planet.

The Growing Water Crisis

A water crisis refers to the scarcity of clean, fresh water needed for various purposes, such as drinking, agriculture, industry, and sanitation. It’s a global problem that affects people, ecosystems, and economies. According to the United Nations, by 2030, nearly half of the world’s population could be facing water scarcity.

Causes of the Water Crisis

a. Overpopulation : The world’s population is rapidly increasing, leading to higher water demand for drinking, irrigation, and industrial use.

b. Climate Change : Changing weather patterns, including prolonged droughts and more frequent extreme weather events, are affecting water availability.

c. Pollution : Water sources are often polluted by chemicals, sewage, and industrial waste, making water unsafe for consumption.

d. Wasteful Practices : Water wastage in agriculture, industry, and households contributes to the crisis.

Consequences of Water Scarcity

a. Health Issues : Lack of clean water leads to waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery, affecting millions, especially children.

b. Food Insecurity : Agriculture heavily relies on water, and water scarcity can lead to crop failures and food shortages.

c. Conflict : Scarcity can trigger conflicts over limited water resources, leading to tensions between communities and even nations.

d. Ecosystem Damage : Wildlife and ecosystems suffer as water sources shrink, impacting biodiversity.

Sustainable Solutions to the Water Crisis

a. Water Conservation : Responsible water use, fixing leaks, and using water-saving appliances can make a significant difference.

b. Improved Infrastructure : Building and maintaining water supply and sanitation systems can help reduce water losses.

c. Rainwater Harvesting : Collecting rainwater for household use and agriculture can mitigate scarcity.

d. Desalination : Technology to turn seawater into freshwater is an option for regions with limited freshwater sources.

The Importance of Education

Education plays a vital role in raising awareness about the water crisis. Schools and communities can educate people about responsible water use, conservation, and the importance of preserving our water resources. Students can become water ambassadors, spreading the message about the need to protect our water.

Global Efforts to Combat Water Scarcity

International organizations like the United Nations and NGOs are working to address water scarcity on a global scale. They provide funding, expertise, and resources to implement sustainable water management practices in affected regions. Collaboration between countries and communities is key to finding solutions.

Conclusion of Essay on Water Crisis

In conclusion, the water crisis is a pressing global issue that affects people, ecosystems, and economies. Understanding its causes and consequences is the first step in finding solutions. It is essential for individuals, communities, and governments to take action by conserving water, improving infrastructure, and supporting sustainable practices. Education and global cooperation are vital in our fight against water scarcity.

By working together, we can ensure that future generations have access to the life-sustaining resource of clean, fresh water. Water is precious, and its conservation is our collective responsibility. As we address the water crisis, we are not only securing our own future but also safeguarding the health and well-being of our planet and all its inhabitants.

Also Check: The Essay on Essay: All you need to know

• Foreign Affairs
• CFR Education
• Newsletters

• Climate Change

Global Climate Agreements: Successes and Failures

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland December 5, 2023 Renewing America

• Defense & Security
• Diplomacy & International Institutions
• Energy & Environment
• Human Rights
• Politics & Government
• Social Issues

Myanmar’s Troubled History

Backgrounder by Lindsay Maizland January 31, 2022

• Europe & Eurasia
• Global Commons
• Middle East & North Africa
• Sub-Saharan Africa

How Tobacco Laws Could Help Close the Racial Gap on Cancer

Interactive by Olivia Angelino, Thomas J. Bollyky , Elle Ruggiero and Isabella Turilli February 1, 2023 Global Health Program

• Backgrounders
• Special Projects

From the Ukraine Conflict to a Secure Europe

Report by Thomas Graham September 4, 2024 Center for Preventive Action

• Centers & Programs
• Books & Reports
• Independent Task Force Program
• Fellowships

Oil and Petroleum Products

Academic Webinar: The Geopolitics of Oil

Webinar with Carolyn Kissane and Irina A. Faskianos April 12, 2023

• Students and Educators
• State & Local Officials
• Religion Leaders
• Local Journalists

NATO’s Future: Enlarged and More European?

Virtual Event with Emma M. Ashford, Michael R. Carpenter, Camille Grand, Thomas Wright, Liana Fix and Charles A. Kupchan June 25, 2024 Europe Program

• Lectureship Series
• Webinars & Conference Calls
• Member Login

Water Stress: A Global Problem That’s Getting Worse

• Water scarcity happens when communities can’t fulfill their water needs, either because supplies are insufficient or infrastructure is inadequate. Today, billions of people face some form of water stress.
• Countries have often cooperated on water management. Still, there are a handful of places where transboundary waters are driving tensions, such as the Nile Basin.
• Climate change will likely exacerbate water stress worldwide, as rising temperatures lead to more unpredictable weather and extreme weather events, including floods and droughts.

Introduction

Billions of people around the world lack adequate access to one of the essential elements of life: clean water. Although governments and aid groups have helped many living in water-stressed regions gain access in recent years, the problem is projected to get worse due to global warming and population growth. Meanwhile, a paucity of international coordination on water security has slowed the search for solutions.

Water stress can differ dramatically from one place to another, in some cases causing wide-reaching damage, including to public health, economic development, and global trade. It can also drive mass migrations and spark conflict. Now, pressure is mounting on countries to implement more sustainable and innovative practices and to improve international cooperation on water management.

What is water stress?

• Food and Water Security
• Energy and Environment
• Infrastructure

Water stress or scarcity occurs when demand for safe, usable water in a given area exceeds the supply. On the demand side, the vast majority—roughly 70 percent—of the world’s freshwater is used for agriculture, while the rest is divided between industrial (19 percent) and domestic uses (11 percent), including for drinking. On the supply side, sources include surface waters, such as rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, as well as groundwater, accessed through aquifers.

Daily News Brief

A summary of global news developments with cfr analysis delivered to your inbox each morning.  weekdays., the world this week, a weekly digest of the latest from cfr on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. every friday., think global health.

A curation of original analyses, data visualizations, and commentaries, examining the debates and efforts to improve health worldwide.  Weekly.

But scientists have different ways of defining and measuring water stress, taking into account a variety of factors including seasonal changes, water quality, and accessibility. Meanwhile, measurements of water stress can be imprecise, particularly in the case of groundwater. “Any numbers out there have to be taken with a grain of salt,” says Upmanu Lall , a Columbia University professor and water expert. “None of these definitions are typically accounting for groundwater usage, or groundwater stock.”

What causes water scarcity?

Water scarcity is often divided into two categories: physical scarcity, when there is a shortage of water because of local ecological conditions; and economic scarcity, when there is inadequate water infrastructure.

The two frequently come together to cause water stress. For instance, a stressed area can have both a shortage of rainfall as well as a lack of adequate water storage and sanitation facilities. Experts say that even when there are significant natural causes for a region’s water stress, human factors are often central to the problem, particularly with regard to access to clean water and safe sanitation. Most recently, for example, the war in Ukraine damaged critical infrastructure, leaving six million people with limited or no access to safe water in 2022.

“Almost always the drinking water problem has nothing to do with physical water scarcity,” says Georgetown University’s Mark Giordano , an expert on water management. “It has to do with the scarcity of financial and political wherewithal to put in the infrastructure to get people clean water. It’s separate.”

At the same time, some areas that suffer physical water scarcity have the infrastructure that has allowed life there to thrive, such as in Oman and the southwestern United States.

A variety of authorities, from the national level down to local jurisdictions, govern or otherwise influence the water supply. In the United States, more than half a dozen federal agencies deal with different aspects of water: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforces regulations on clean water, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) prepares for and responds to water disasters . Similar authorities exist at the state and local levels to protect and oversee the use of water resources, including through zoning and rehabilitation projects.

Which regions are most water-stressed?

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the worst off in terms of physical water stress, according to most experts. MENA receives less rainfall than other regions, and its countries tend to have fast-growing, densely populated urban centers that require more water. But many countries in these regions, especially wealthier ones, still meet their water needs. For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) imports nearly all of its food, alleviating the need to use water for agriculture. The UAE and other wealthy MENA countries also rely heavily on the desalination of abundant ocean water, albeit this process is an expensive, energy-intensive one.

Meanwhile, places experiencing significant economic scarcity include Central African countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo , which receives a lot of rain but lacks proper infrastructure and suffers from high levels of mismanagement.

Even high-income countries experience water stress. Factors including outdated infrastructure and rapid population growth have put tremendous stress on some U.S. water systems , causing crises in cities including Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey.

How is climate change affecting water stress?

For every 1°C (1.8°F) increase in the global average temperature, UN experts project a 20 percent drop in renewable water resources. Global warming is expected to increase the number of water-stressed areas and heighten water stress in already affected regions. Subtropical areas, such as Australia, the southern United States, and North African countries, are expected to warm and suffer more frequent and longer droughts; however, when rainfall does occur in these regions, it is projected to be more intense. Weather in tropical regions will likewise become more variable, climate scientists say.

Agriculture could become a particular challenge. Farming suffers as rainfall becomes more unpredictable and rising temperatures accelerate the evaporation of water from soil. A more erratic climate is also expected to bring more floods, which can wipe out crops an overwhelm storage systems. Furthermore, rainfall runoff can sweep up sediment that can clog treatment facilities and contaminate other water sources.

In a 2018 report , a panel consisting of many of the world’s top climate researchers showed that limiting global warming to a maximum 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels—the aim of the Paris Agreement on climate—could substantially reduce the likelihood of water stress in some regions, such as the Mediterranean and southern Africa, compared to an unchecked increase in temperature. However, most experts say the Paris accord will not be enough to prevent the most devastating effects of climate change.

What are its impacts on public health and development?

Prolonged water stress can have devastating effects on public health and economic development. More than two billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water; and nearly double that number—more than half the world’s population—are without adequate sanitation services . These deprivations can spur the transmission of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, polio, hepatitis A, and diarrhea.

At the same time, because water scarcity makes agriculture much more difficult, it threatens a community’s access to food. Food-insecure communities can face both acute and chronic hunger, where children are more at risk of conditions stemming from malnutrition, such as stunting and wasting, and chronic illnesses due to poor diet, such as diabetes.

Even if a water-stressed community has stable access to potable water, people can travel great lengths or wait in long lines to get it—time that could otherwise be spent at work or at school. Economists note these all combine [PDF] to take a heavy toll on productivity and development.

Living in a Water-Stressed World

A housing development lies on the edge of Cathedral City, a desert resort town in southern California, in April 2015.

Eleven-year-old Chikuru carries water in a plastic jerrican, which weighs about forty pounds when full, to her home in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, in September 2019.

The water level at Camlidere Dam in the Turkish capital of Ankara is low due to seasonal drought and high water consumption amid the COVID-19 pandemic, November 2020.

A young boy washes a cooking pot in a pool of rainwater outside a slum where members of the Muhamasheen minority group live in Sanaa, Yemen, July 2020.

Abdel-Shaheed Gerges, a farmer, touches water flowing through a government-developed irrigation channel in Esna, Egypt, in October 2019.

Summer Weeks bathes her two-year-old daughter, Ravynn, outside their home in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, September 2020.

A worker waters turf at a sprawling horse-racing facility in Dubai in March 2021.

A woman collects water from a well dug in the Black Umfolozi Riverbed, which is dry due to drought, outside of Durban, South Africa, in January 2016.

The shadow of a girl who fled Raqqa is cast on the wall of a water spigot at a camp for internally displaced people in Syria, August 2017.

Kevin Dudley carries his daughter, Katelyn, and bottles of water to his apartment amid weeks-long water outages across Jackson, Mississippi, in March 2021.

A woman uses swamp water to wash clothes in northern Jakarta, Indonesia, in March 2018.

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the need for safe water access. Handwashing is one of the most effective tools for combating the coronavirus, but health experts noted that three in ten individuals —2.3 billion people globally—could not wash their hands at home at the pandemic’s onset.

How has water factored into international relations?

Many freshwater sources transcend international borders, and, for the most part, national governments have been able to manage these resources cooperatively. Roughly three hundred international water agreements have been signed since 1948. Finland and Russia, for example, have long cooperated on water-management challenges, including floods, fisheries, and pollution. Water-sharing agreements have even persisted through cross-border conflicts about other issues, as has been the case with South Asia’s Indus River and the Jordan River in the Middle East.

However, there are a handful of hot spots where transboundary waters are a source of tension, either because there is no agreement in place or an existing water regime is disputed. One of these is the Nile Basin, where the White and Blue Nile Rivers flow from lakes in East Africa northward to the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt claims the rights to most of the Nile’s water based on several treaties, the first dating back to the colonial era; but other riparian states say they are not bound to the accords because they were never party to them. The dispute has flared in recent years after Ethiopia began construction of a massive hydroelectric dam that Egypt says drastically cuts its share of water.

Transboundary water disputes can also fuel intrastate conflict; some observers note this has increased in recent years , particularly in the hot spots where there are fears of cross-border conflict. For example, a new hydropower project could benefit elites but do little to improve the well-being of the communities who rely on those resources.

Moreover, water stress can affect global flows of goods and people. For instance, wildfires and drought in 2010 wiped out Russian crops, which resulted in a spike in commodities prices and food riots in Egypt and Tunisia at the start of the Arab uprisings. Climate stress is also pushing some to migrate across borders. The United Nations predicts that without interventions in climate change, water scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions will displace hundreds of millions of people by 2030.

What are international organizations and governments doing to alleviate water stress?

There has been some international mobilization around water security. Ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , a sweeping fifteen-year development agenda adopted by member states in 2015. Smart water management is also vital to many of the other SDGs, such as eliminating hunger and ensuring good health and well-being. And while the Paris Agreement on climate does not refer to water explicitly, the United Nations calls [PDF] water management an “essential component of nearly all the mitigation and adaptation strategies.” The organization warns of the increasing vulnerability of conventional water infrastructure, and points to many climate-focused alternatives, such as coastal reservoirs and solar-powered water systems.

However, there is no global framework for addressing water stress, like there is for fighting climate change or preserving biodiversity . The most recent UN summit on water, held in March 2023, was the first such conference since 1977 and didn’t aim to produce an international framework. It instead created a UN envoy on water and saw hundreds of governments, nonprofits, and businesses sign on to a voluntary Water Action Agenda, which analysts called an important but insufficient step compared to a binding agreement among world governments.

Some governments and partner organizations have made progress in increasing access to water services: Between 2000 and 2017, the number of people using safely managed drinking water and safely managed sanitation services rose by 10 percent and 17 percent, respectively. In 2022, the Joe Biden administration announced an action plan to elevate global water security as a critical component of its efforts to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives. But the pace of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have presented new challenges. Now, many countries say they are unlikely to implement integrated water management systems by 2030, the target date for fulfilling the SDGs. 

Still, some governments are taking ambitious and creative steps to improve their water security that could serve as models for others:

Green infrastructure . Peruvian law mandates that water utilities reinvest a portion of their profits into green infrastructure (the use of plant, soil, and other natural systems to manage stormwater), and Canada and the United States have provided tens of millions of dollars in recent years to support Peru’s efforts [PDF]. Vietnam has taken similar steps to integrate natural and more traditional built water infrastructure.

Wastewater recycling . More and more cities around the globe are recycling sewage water into drinking water, something Namibia’s desert capital has been doing for decades. Facilities in countries including China and the United States turn byproducts from wastewater treatment into fertilizer.

Smarter agriculture . Innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence and genome editing are also driving progress. China has become a world leader in bioengineering crops to make them more productive and resilient.

Recommended Resources

The Wilson Center’s Lauren Risi writes that water wars between countries have not come to pass, but subnational conflicts over the resource are already taking a toll.

CFR’s Why It Matters podcast talks to Georgetown University’s Mark Giordano and the Global Water Policy Project’s Sandra Postel about water scarcity .

The World Economic Forum describes the growing water crisis in the Horn of Africa, while National Geographic looks at how the prolonged drought is pushing wildlife closer to towns.

The World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct maps the areas facing extremely high water stress.

The United Nations shares facts about water and its role in all aspects of life.

BuzzFeed News interviews residents of Jackson, Mississippi , who lost access to safe water after freezing temperatures wreaked havoc on the city’s decaying infrastructure.

• Sustainable Development Goals (UN)

Emily Lieberman contributed to this Backgrounder. Michael Bricknell and Will Merrow helped create the graphics.

• What are its impacts on health and development?
• What is being done to alleviate water stress?

More From Our Experts

How Will the EU Elections Results Change Europe?

In Brief by Liana Fix June 10, 2024 Europe Program

Iran Attack Means an Even Tougher Balancing Act for the U.S. in the Middle East

In Brief by Steven A. Cook April 14, 2024 Middle East Program

Iran Attacks on Israel Spur Escalation Concerns

In Brief by Ray Takeyh April 14, 2024 Middle East Program

Top Stories on CFR

Election 2024

Why the U.S. Presidential Election Matters for Europe Link

via Council of Councils September 3, 2024

The Israel-Hezbollah Conflict: Where It Stands

Expert Brief by Steven A. Cook August 29, 2024 Middle East Program

The IMF’s Latest External Sector Report Misses the Mark

Blog Post by Brad W. Setser August 26, 2024 Follow the Money

Water Shortage’ Major Causes and Implication Cause and Effect Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

It’s no doubt that the world is facing a topic of water crisis which has gone out of control and therefore raising a lot of concerns from the leaders and international organization who are trying to come up with ideas of solving this problem (Oxfam.org.uk, 2011).

However, the root cause of this problem is upon the human race that is entirely to blame for the ever increasing water crisis due poor and undeveloped policies governing protection of such water one of the most precious natural resource. In this regard the following discussion will elaborate on the major causes and implication of water shortage in the planet today.

First, both industrial and domestic water pollution is one of the major causes of water shortage because as more water is polluted the more water is wasted (Oxfam.org.uk, 2011).

Due to lack of proper technology available for recycling and purifying such polluted water in many countries across the world, issues of water pollution have become so prevalent and therefore contributing to high percentage of water wastage.

Secondly, water shortage has also been attributed to the high population growth causing a serious competition for this resource (Jones, 2010). The world population is increasing at an alarming rate and consequently straining the supply of this natural resource and hence resulting to severe scarcity of such water due to it’s over use.

Additionally, poor management of the water catchment areas is also another cause of water shortage (Oxfam.org.uk, 2011).

Majorly, when water catchment areas are destroyed through deforestation among many other ways, water is also likely to decrease due to destruction rocks and water table hence resulting to low water generation from the surface of earth (Oxfam.org.uk, 2011).

On the other hand, due to the fact that water has become a scarce resource, consequently this has possible implications to the humanity and animal kingdom as well.

To the humanity, one of the major implications is that, water scarcity may possibly cause a disagreement of ideas in the planet due to conflict of interest among different countries who would want to have the natural resource for them selves.

Additionally, issues of water shortage may also probably cause division of classes when people will want to own water privately and this will create a class of water have and have-nots (Jones, 2010).

Summary of the article

This article is a discussion regarding one major problem that is an issue of concern in the 21 st century which according to the author, the world is currently facing a major crisis- the scarcity of water one of the most useful natural resource.

The argument is that, in the 20 th century the world was having a crisis in dealing with issues such as political ideologies among others, but now the current crisis is much worse and it might be one the major causes of conflict in the planet today (Jones, 2010).

The author describes the intensity to how much water as natural resource has become so scarce especially the fresh water which is essential for domestic consumption, in fact, the most shocking news is that, according to author’s report, fresh water currently contributes only about “2.5 percent of the planet’s entire water supply” and therefore, such supply of water can not meet the actual demand for water worldwide since the world’s population is also increasing at an alarming rate and consequently causing an increasing in water demand at least by double the original water necessity (Jones, 2010).

For this reason, then it is reasonably clear that the current trends of this particular natural resource can not sustain the world population; meaning that those sectors that fully depend on water such as agriculture and manufacturing industries may also not be able to function fully (Jones, 2010).

As a result of all these issues, then the ever rising water shortage crisis might be a cause of conflict in the world due to the competition for the natural resource that will also rise.

For this particular concern, there is a clear warning to the humanity that, this is a “real danger” because people will clash to own any drop of fresh water and then there will be “water have and water have not” categories of people (Jones, 2010).

Additionally, the article describes water shortage as a “genuine problem” that the world leaders need to address in order to establish a long lasting solution to safeguard the future (Jones, 2010).

The opinion is that, the leaders should put laws which are necessary in governing proper and at the same time, people should try to reduce cases of water pollution in order to facilitate recycling process.

Clear examples and factors arising due to fear of water scarcity

Water crisis is a global issue although it is more pronounced in some countries than others. For instance, a good example is river Nile which is one of the biggest rivers and a major source of water for various uses in North Africa region.

However, river Nile is also a source of worry to the current international relations due to the rising water competition amongst three African countries namely; Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia (Egypt. com, 2007).

There is a crisis in this part of the world where there is a lot of politics on which country should rightfully tap out water (Egypt. com, 2007).

Egypt being a country with powerful military power is more likely to initiate military action in order to ensure she has control over the use of this water for its domestic use and for agricultural production as well, besides, Sudan and Ethiopia also claims that, they have the exclusive rights to use this water which Egypt argues that, the use of water by these other two countries might starve them (Egypt. com, 2007).

Besides, Lake Victoria in East Africa is also another geographical region where conflict over water is an issue already raising concern.

Due to the fact that, the lake lies along the boarder lines of three countries, namely; Kenya, Ugunda and Tanzania, this is enough reason to have a water crisis in this region (Kamugisha, 2007).

For instance, the many activities takes place at this lake including economical activities such as fishing among others is the major cause of catastrophe over the volume of water which is reportedly decreasing with each day.

There is a conflict over ownership of the lake due to the economical benefits which the three countries are generating from this lake causing some of the countries to extend their boundaries in order to have a bigger share of the lake which has already triggered a major conflict (Kamugisha, 2007).

It is no doubt that, these two cases reflect a rising conflict in Africa which happens to be one of the most affected regions in the world. The conflicts are on the rise as a result of competition for the natural resource which is becoming a scarce every day.

The world is currently facing much worse crisis in the 21 st century than previously when the world leaders were only having crisis over political ideologies and so on (Jones, 2010).

Currently, this is an issue that should be addressed with a lot of concern putting into consideration that, this particular issue of water scarcity might be the next cause of major conflict in the planet especially also considering that this particular natural resource is diminishing at a frightening rate.

In this regard, the humanity has a duty to safeguard their future in order to ensure it’s survival which can not be achieved without a drop of fresh water.

World leader, scientific researchers , international organization among many others, all have a major rule in enlightening the society about the need to protect and take care of this precious commodity in order to ensure sustainability for many years to come because water is an essential component that the whole animal kingdom rely on for life sustenance (Sipes, 2010).

Therefore appropriate and necessary actions should be implemented to curb the issue of water scarcity. Such measures would include; proper management of water catchment areas, reduce cases of water pollution, plant more tree around the globe, and establish policies such as water act which has already been implemented in US to reduce water wastage (Sipes, 2010).

Among many other measures, the solution to water scarcity is achievable if we fully get committed to the set polices in order to provide a long lasting solution one for all.

Egypt (2007). Egypt News – Water crisis hits Egypt “Country of Nile River” . Web.

Jones, D. (2010). Water: The cause of the next global conflict? Web.

Kamugisha, D. (2007). Lake Victoria Extinction and Human Vulnerability in Uganda . Web.

Oxfam (2011). Water for all . Web.

Sipes, J. (2010). Sustainable Solutions for Water Resources . New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Press.

• Nuclear Power Crisis in Japan and Its Implications
• Nuclear Energy Benefits and Demerits
• “The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?” Documentary
• Pesticide Usage and Water Scarcity
• National Music Studio: SWOT Analysis
• Can Green Consumerism Be Anything More Than a Band-Aid Solution?
• Jefferson Island Salt Mine Louisiana Lake Peigneur 1980
• Impact of Plastics on the Environment
• Impacts of acidic deposition
• A Call for Conservation of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, March 21). Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication. https://ivypanda.com/essays/water-crisis/

"Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication." IvyPanda , 21 Mar. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/water-crisis/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication'. 21 March.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication." March 21, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/water-crisis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication." March 21, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/water-crisis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Water Shortage' Major Causes and Implication." March 21, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/water-crisis/.

Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Water Scarcity — Water Crisis: Understanding the Causes and Seeking Solutions

Water Crisis: Understanding The Causes and Seeking Solutions

• Categories: Environmental Issues Water Scarcity

About this sample

Words: 1019 |

Published: Jan 28, 2021

Words: 1019 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Causes of the water crisis, consequences of the water crisis, seeking solutions to the water crisis.

• Invest in water storage, distribution, and treatment infrastructure.
• Implement smart technologies for monitoring and controlling water usage.
• Promote efficient water allocation and pricing mechanisms.
• Encourage farmers to adopt precision agriculture techniques.
• Promote the use of drought-resistant crop varieties.
• Implement efficient irrigation systems, such as drip irrigation.
• Reduce excessive use of fertilizers and pesticides.
• Promote water conservation at the individual and community levels.
• Fix water leaks and encourage the use of low-flow appliances.
• Educate the public on water-saving habits.
• Invest in advanced wastewater treatment facilities.
• Implement stricter regulations on industrial and agricultural wastewater discharge.
• Promote the recycling and reuse of treated wastewater (water reclamation).
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions through sustainable energy sources.
• Support afforestation and reforestation efforts to maintain water catchment areas.
• Develop and implement climate-resilient water management strategies.
• ABC News. (2019). Chennai's the latest city to have almost run out of water, and other cities could follow suit. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06- 22/chennais-telling-the-globe-a-story-about-water-scarcity/11229084
• Ceranic, I. (2018). Perth rainfall is higher than Melbourne, Hobart, London despite reputation for sunny beaches. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018- 04-24/perth-rainfall-higher-than-melbourne-hobart-and-london/9688142
• Green Water Plumbing. (2019). Water Crisis: Is Australia Running Out of Water? Retrieved from https://www.greenplanetplumbing.com.au/water-crisis-is- australia-running-out-of-water/
• Juneja, P. (n.d.). The Economic Impact of Cape Town’s Water Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.managementstudyguide.com/economic-impact-of-cape-town-water- crisis.htm
• Qureshi, M. E.; Hanjra, Munir A.; Ward, J. (2013). Impact of water scarcity in Australia on global food security in an era of climate change. Food Policy, 38:136-145. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2012.11.003
• Thirumurthy, P. The News Minute. (2019). Chennai water crisis: Schools closes down for junior classes, others declare half-day. Retrieved from https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/chennai-water-crisis-school-closes-down- junior-classes-others-declare-half-day-103919
• United Nations. (2014). Water for Life Decade: Water scarcity. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml
• Wright, I. (2017). This is what Australia’s growing cities need to do to avoid running dry. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/this-is-what-australias-growing-cities- need-to-do-to-avoid-running-dry-86301
• Lakshmi, K. (2019). Chennai’s Day Zero: It’s not just meteorology but mismanagement that’s made the city run dry. Retrieved from https://www.thehindu.com/sci- tech/energy-and-environment/chennais-day-zero-its-not-just-meteorology-but- mismanagement-thats-made-the-city-run-dry/article28197491.ece

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Environment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 929 words

1 pages / 493 words

3 pages / 1708 words

4 pages / 2245 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Water Scarcity

Water, the elixir of life, is a finite resource essential for all living organisms on Earth. Yet, despite its undeniable importance, water shortage has become a critical global issue. This essay delves into the causes, [...]

Water is an essential resource that is vital for all forms of life on Earth. It is crucial for human survival, as it is needed for drinking, cooking, sanitation, agriculture, and industry. However, the availability and access to [...]

Scarcity is a fundamental concept in economics that refers to the limited availability of resources in comparison to the unlimited human wants. This imbalance creates the need for making choices and prioritizing the allocation [...]

The subject of water consumption is a critical and multifaceted topic that holds significant importance in today's world. With growing concerns about water scarcity, environmental sustainability, and the health of our [...]

An essay about soil and water conservation aims to shed light on the importance of protecting our soil and water resources. Soil and water are two of the most vital natural resources on Earth. Soil provides essential nutrients [...]

Agricultural may be a powerful tool to forge economic development of any country and to finish extreme financial condition. It is calculable that agriculture can feed a projected 9. 7 billion individuals by 2050. Growth within [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Residents queue to fill water bottles at a natural water spring in Cape Town, South Africa, a city that may soon have to shut off its taps due to a severe water shortage.

From Not Enough to Too Much, the World’s Water Crisis Explained

Many more cities than Cape Town face an uncertain future over water. But there are emerging solutions.

“Day Zero,” when at least a million homes in the city of Cape Town, South Africa, will no longer have any running water , was originally scheduled for April. It was recently moved to July . The three-year long drought hasn’t ended, but severe water rationing—limiting people to a mere 13 gallons (50 litres) per person per day—has made a difference. (To put this into perspective, an average U.S. citizen uses 100 gallons (375 liters) per day .)

“No person in Cape Town should be flushing potable water down a toilet any more.… No one should be showering more than twice a week now,” said Helen Zille , the premier of the Western Cape province, where Cape Town is located.

Like many places in the world, Cape Town and the surrounding region has likely reached “peak water,” or the limit of how much water can be reasonably taken from the area, says water scientist Peter Gleick , president-emeritus of the Pacific Institute. Gleick, who has spent substantial time in South Africa, says the country generally has good water managers.

“Two years ago, I would not have predicted Cape Town would face day Zero,” he said in an interview. However, climate change has disrupted the Earth’s hydrological cycle (water cycle), changing when, where, and how much precipitation falls. That has made water management planning far more challenging, he said. Yet our water systems were largely built based on the more stable climate of the past.

“What’s happening in Cape Town could happen anywhere,” says Gleick.

Global Risk

Brazil’s São Paulo, a megacity of 20 million, faced its own Day Zero in 2015. The city turned off its water supply for 12 hours a day, forcing many businesses and industries to shut down . In 2008, Barcelona, Spain, had to import tankers full of freshwater from France. Droughts have also become more frequent, more severe, and affecting more people around the world.

Fourteen of the world’s 20 megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. As many as four billion people already live in regions that experience severe water stress for at least one month of the year, according to a 2016 study in the journal Science Advances . Nearly half of those people live in India and China. With populations rising, these stresses will only mount.

Disaster data compiled by the U.N . clearly shows floods are also getting worse. They are happening more frequently, especially in coastal regions and river valleys, and affecting more people. Of all major disasters in the world between 1995 and 2015, 90 percent were weather-related events, such as floods, storms, heatwaves, and droughts. Flooding accounted for more than half of all weather-related disasters, affecting 2.3 billion people and killing 157,000 in that 20-year period. Last year, the costs of extreme weather—floods, droughts, wildfires, storms—in the U.S. reached a record-topping $300 billion . These events displaced more than one million Americans from their homes.

Humanity is facing a growing challenge of too much water in some places and not enough water in others. This is being driven not just by climate change, but by population and economic growth and poor water management, experts warn.

“Water scarcity and flood problems are primarily due to quick growth, increasing vulnerability, and insufficient preparation,” says Arjen Hoekstra , a professor of water management at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. “Climate change, however, is and will worsen the situation in most cases.”

The Roll of “Embedded Water”

Cape Town, where nearly four million people live, has a dry climate much like southern California. It is facing it’s Day Zero due to increased water demands from population and economic growth in combination with a three-year drought that’s severely limited the water supply. Yet what many people don’t realize is that typical home use of water—for washing, flushing, and cooking—represents only about three percent of humanity’s total water consumption, says Hoekstra. Agriculture uses the lion’s share, 80 to 90 percent, followed by energy production and industry.

Rivers Run Dry

The Cape Town region is the heart of South Africa’s wine country, which exported 113 million gallons (428.5 million litres) of wine in 2016 to Europe and the U.S. Yet this export represents a much bigger amount of water that was used to grow and process the grapes. Most of that water is no longer available for human consumption, according to Hoekstra, who is the creator of the water footprint concept. He and colleagues at the Water Footprint Network have worked out that it takes between 26 to 53 gallons (100 to 200 liters) of water to grow the grapes and process them into one five-ounce (125 ml) glass of wine.

In other words, the net amount of water used to grow or make something, be it a lemon, cellphone, or glass of wine, is the product’s water footprint. Most of the water used to make a typical glass of wine is lost to evaporation, with a small amount stored in the grapes, and the rest unsuitable for reuse. While the evaporated water will eventually become rain, it is unlikely to fall over the same vineyards, or even in the Western Cape province, meaning it is effectively “lost” to the region.

So that means a typical 25-ounce (750 ml) bottle of wine has a water footprint of nearly 200 gallons (750 liters). That means the region’s 2016 wine exports involved the net consumption of 113.2 billion gallons (428.5 billion liters) of water. This is water that is lost to the region.

South Africa already has 7 million people without access to water . Meeting their needs would require 33.3 billion gallons (126 billion liters) per year, one third of the amount the wine industry consumes. On top of that, the Western Cape exported an estimated 231,000 tonnes of citrus fruits , mostly oranges, in 2017. The water footprint of one orange—the net amount of water used to grow it—averages 21 gallons (80 liters). Using that basis, those citrus exports used up 30 billion gallons (115 billion liters) of the province’s water.

Not only does it take water to grow anything, it also takes water to make most things: cars, furniture, books, electronics, buildings, jewelry, toys, and even electricity. This water, which often goes largely unseen, is often called “virtual water.” What gets forgotten is that virtual water is as real as the water you drink.

South Africa, a water-stressed country, also exports oil products, minerals, and metals, all of which require enormous amounts of water. For example, it exported 211 tonnes of platinum in 2012. That’s like an export of 45 billion gallons (170 billion liters) of water—the estimated amount of water needed to mine and process the metal .

Other large countries with growing populations, such as China and India, also export staggering volumes of virtual water, often while facing considerable water scarcity problems at home. “This simply can’t continue,” says Hoekstra.

You May Also Like

Europe’s water crisis is much worse than we thought

The world’s historic sites face climate change. Can Petra lead the way?

This 2,200-year-old slab bears the world’s first mention of leap year

Seeking solutions.

All of those exports could be produced using far less water, Hoekstra says. It starts with what he calls the most important water management strategy: grow and produce things in the right place. In other words, water-intensive crops like rice and cotton should be grown in water-rich regions.

In a global economy, drought can be a big issue even in water-rich countries, because of a growing dependence on imports. Around 38 percent of the European Union’s water consumption is reliant on water availability in other countries, to grow soybeans, rice, cotton, and other products that it imports. “That makes Europe vulnerable to increasing water scarcity and drought,” says Christopher Briggs , executive director of Water Footprint Network.

A coastal city, Cape Town hopes to solve its problem by getting a new water source: the ocean. It is building its first desalination plants . However, these are expensive and energy intensive. Gleick says it would be more cost effective for the region to shift to less-water intensive crops and to reuse treated wastewater. Currently, Cape Town reuses just five percent of its treated wastewater, compared to Israel’s 85 percent. Israel has also eliminated water-thirsty crops like cotton and made major improvements in water efficiency to free up more water for population growth.

California, which recently suffered through four years of drought and water restrictions , also needs to shift its agricultural production to less water-using crops, says Gleick, who is based there. And the state could increase its wastewater reuse from the current 15 percent, using the surplus to recharge depleted aquifers and use on crops.

A reservoir can be seen at a low level in Cape Town in February. Many other cities could suffer similar fates in the near future, experts warn.

When There’s Too Much Water

Perhaps ironically, too much water too fast was California’s most recent water problem. Following its worst wildfire season in history, heavy rainfall this winter produced mud slides that killed more than 20 people and destroyed or damaged hundreds of homes. Hurricane Harvey , which hit Texas and Louisiana last August, causing $125 billion in damage, dumped more water out of the sky than any storm in U.S. history. Some 890,000 families sought federal disaster aid, most often from flooding in the Houston area—in large part because many homes were built on flood plains . At the start of March, five states were under a state of emergency (Louisiana, Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, and Michigan) due to heavy rainfalls and flooding.

Rapid population growth, building on floodplains or low-lying coastal regions, and climate change are the biggest reasons why flooding is affecting more people and causing ever greater damage, warns Gleick.

Climate change is the result of burning fossil fuels and has added 46 percent more heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But even if fossil-fuel used ended today, that additional heat in the atmosphere will put 10 times more Americans at risk of being flooded out by rivers over the next 20 years, a new study reveals .

“More than half of the United States must at least double their protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in river flood risks,” says lead-author Sven Willner from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Rainfall changes caused by global warming will increase river flood risks across the globe, the study found. In South America, the number of people affected by river flooding will likely increase from 6 to 12 million. In Africa, the number will rise from 25 to 34 million, and in Asia from 70 to 156 million.

It bears repeating that these findings are based on the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In reality, humanity added 45 billion tons in 2017, and will likely add that much or more in 2018. Without limiting human-caused warming to well below 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees Celsius), the river flood risk in many regions will be beyond what we can adapt to, Willner and team’s study concludes.

Climate change is also causing sea levels to rise, resulting in substantial coastal flooding during high tides and storms. More than 13 million Americans living on the coasts will be forced to move by 2100 because of rising ocean levels, according to a 2017 study by Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia. About 2.5 million will flee the region that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. Greater New Orleans loses up to 500,000 people; the New York City area loses 50,000, the study estimated. These coastal migrants will likely go to cities on high ground with mild climates, such as Atlanta, Austin, Madison, and Memphis. ( See what would happen if all the ice melted .)

“If people are forced to move because their houses become inundated, the migration could affect many landlocked communities as well,” said Hauer in a statement.

Related Topics

When a people's stories are at risk, who steps in to save them?

As extreme weather ramps up, animal rescuers are struggling to save our pets

The link between extreme weather and climate change has never been more clear

In the heart of the Amazon, this pristine wilderness shows nature’s resilience

Mexico City is running out of water—are these cities next?

• Environment
• Paid Content

History & Culture

• History & Culture
• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

Search the United Nations

• What Is Climate Change
• Myth Busters
• Renewable Energy
• Finance & Justice
• Initiatives
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Paris Agreement
• Climate Ambition Summit 2023
• Climate Conferences
• Press Material
• Communications Tips

Water – at the center of the climate crisis

Water and climate change are inextricably linked. Climate change affects the world’s water in complex ways. From unpredictable rainfall patterns to shrinking ice sheets, rising sea levels, floods and droughts – most impacts of climate change come down to water water ( UN Water ).

Climate change is exacerbating both water scarcity and water-related hazards (such as floods and droughts), as rising temperatures disrupt precipitation patterns and the entire water cycle ( UNICEF ).

Get more facts on climate and water below.  

Water scarcity  

• About two billion people worldwide don’t have access to safe drinking water today ( SDG Report 2022 ), and roughly half of the world’s population is experiencing severe water scarcity for at least part of the year ( IPCC ) . These numbers are expected to increase, exacerbated by climate change and population growth ( WMO ).  
• Only 0.5 per cent of water on Earth is useable and available freshwater – and climate change is dangerously affecting that supply. Over the past twenty years, terrestrial water storage – including soil moisture, snow and ice – has dropped at a rate of 1 cm per year, with major ramifications for water security ( WMO ).  
• Water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to further decline over the course of the century, thus reducing water availability during warm and dry periods in regions supplied by melt water from major mountain ranges, where more than one-sixth of the world’s population currently live ( IPCC ).  
• Sea-level rise is projected to extend salinization of groundwater, decreasing freshwater availability for humans and ecosystems in coastal areas ( IPCC ).  
• Limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C would approximately halve the proportion of the world population expected to suffer water scarcity, although there is considerable variability between regions ( IPCC ).  
• Water quality is also affected by climate change, as higher water temperatures and more frequent floods and droughts are projected to exacerbate many forms of water pollution – from sediments to pathogens and pesticides ( IPCC ).  
• Climate change, population growth and increasing water scarcity will put pressure on food supply ( IPCC ) as most of the freshwater used, about 70 per cent on average, is used for agriculture (it takes between 2000 and 5000 liters of water to produce a person’s daily food) ( FAO ).

Water-related hazards  

• Climate change has made extreme weather events such as floods and droughts more likely and more severe ( IPCC ).  
• Rising global temperatures increase the moisture the atmosphere can hold, resulting in more storms and heavy rains, but paradoxically also more intense dry spells as more water evaporates from the land and global weather patterns change. ( World Bank )  
• Drought and flood risks, and associated societal damages, are projected to further increase with every degree of global warming ( IPCC ).  
• The frequency of heavy precipitation events will very likely increase over most areas during the 21st century, with more rain-generated floods. At the same time, the proportion of land in extreme drought at any one time is also projected to increase ( IPCC ).  
• Water-related disasters have dominated the list of disasters over the past 50 years and account for 70 per cent of all deaths related to natural disasters ( World Bank ).  
• Since 2000, flood-related disasters have risen by 134 per cent compared with the two previous decades. Most of the flood-related deaths and economic losses were recorded in Asia ( WMO ). The number and duration of droughts also increased by 29 per cent over this same period. Most drought-related deaths occurred in Africa ( WMO ).

Water solutions  

• Healthy aquatic ecosystems and improved water management can lower greenhouse gas emissions and provide protection against climate hazards ( Water and Climate Coalition ).  
• Wetlands such as mangroves, seagrasses, marshes and swamps are highly effective carbon sinks that absorb and store CO2, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ( UNEP ).  
• Wetlands also serve as a buffer against extreme weather events ( UNEP ). They provide a natural shield against storm surges and absorb excess water and precipitation. Through the plants and microorganisms that they house, wetlands also provide water storage and purification.  
• Early warning systems for floods, droughts and other water-related hazards provide a more than tenfold return on investment and can significantly reduce disaster risk: a 24-hour warning of a coming storm can cut the ensuing damage by 30 per cent ( WMO ).  
• Water supply and sanitation systems that can withstand climate change could save the lives of more than 360,000 infants every year ( New Climate Economy report ).  
• Climate-smart agriculture using drip irrigation and other means of using water more efficiently can help reduce demand on freshwater supplies ( UNEP ).

Learn more about…

Climate issues

Learn more about how climate change impacts are felt across different sectors and ecosystems.

What is climate adaptation? Why is it so important for every country? Find out how we can protect lives and livelihoods as the climate changes.

• What is climate change?

Our climate 101 offers a quick take on the how and why of climate change.

Renewable energy – powering a safer future

Derived from natural resources as hydropower, renewable energy is key to a safer, cleaner, and sustainable world.  Explore common sources of renewable energy here.

Elliott Harris: Measure the value of nature – before it’s too late

UN Chief Economist Elliott Harris introduces a ground-breaking shift in valuing nature as a way of making more informed decisions about economies, climate action and the protection of biodiversity.

The Ocean – the world’s greatest ally against climate change

The ocean is central to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Here are a few reasons we need to safeguard the ocean as our best ally for climate solutions.

Rewa Assi: Adapting to the changing environment

The agricultural engineer from Lebanon talks about the importance of sustainable agriculture and water management for climate action in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Facts and figures

• Causes and effects
• Myth busters

Cutting emissions

• Explaining net zero
• High-level expert group on net zero
• Checklists for credibility of net-zero pledges
• Greenwashing
• What you can do

Clean energy

• Renewable energy – key to a safer future
• What is renewable energy
• Five ways to speed up the energy transition
• Why invest in renewable energy
• Clean energy stories
• A just transition

Adapting to climate change

• Climate adaptation
• Early warnings for all
• Youth voices

Financing climate action

• Finance and justice
• Loss and damage
• $100 billion commitment
• Why finance climate action
• Biodiversity
• Human Security

International cooperation

• What are Nationally Determined Contributions
• Acceleration Agenda
• Climate Ambition Summit
• Climate conferences (COPs)
• Youth Advisory Group
• Action initiatives
• Secretary-General’s speeches
• Press material
• Fact sheets
• Communications tips

• The Water Crisis

The power of water

Water connects every aspect of life. Access to safe water and sanitation can quickly turn problems into potential – empowering people with time for school and work, and contributing to improved health for women, children, and families around the world. 

Today, 2.2 billion people – 1 in 4 – lack access to safe water and 3.5 billion people – 2 in 5 – lack access to a safe toilet. These are the people we empower.

Learn more about the global water crisis >

Learn more about the global sanitation crisis >

A women's crisis

Women are disproportionately affected by the water crisis, as they are often responsible for collecting water. This takes time away from work, school and caring for family. The lack of water and sanitation locks women in a cycle of poverty. 

Empowering women is critical to solving the water crisis. When women have access to safe water at home, they can pursue more beyond water collection and their traditional roles. They have time to work and add to their household income. 

Learn how the water crisis affects women >

Women and children bear the primary responsibility for water collection.

A health crisis

The water crisis is a health crisis. More than 1 million people die each year from water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases which could be reduced with access to safe water or sanitation. Every 2 minutes a child dies from a water-related disease. Access to safe water and sanitation contributes to improved health and helps prevent the spread of infectious disease. It means reduced child and maternal mortality rates. It means reduced physical injury from constant lifting and carrying heavy loads of water. Now more than ever, access to safe water is critical to the health of families around the world.

Read why the water crisis is a health crisis >

A children's and education crisis

Children are often responsible for collecting water for their families. This takes time away from school and play. Access to safe water and sanitation changes this. Reductions in time spent collecting water have been found to increase school attendance, especially for girls. Access to safe water gives children time to play and opportunity for a bright future.

See how the water crisis affects children and their education >

Reductions in time spent collecting water increases school attendance, especially for girls.

An economic crisis

Time spent gathering water or seeking safe sanitation accounts for billions in lost economic opportunities. $260 billion is lost globally each year due to lack of basic water and sanitation. Access to safe water and sanitation at home turns time spent into time saved, giving families more time to pursue education and work opportunities that will help them break the cycle of poverty.

Learn more about how the water crisis is an economic crisis >

A climate crisis

Water is the primary way in which we will feel many of the effects of climate change. Millions of families in poverty live in regions where water access is limited, temporary, or unstable. They are less prepared to face the effects of climate change like temperature extremes, floods, and droughts. Access to sustainable safe water and improved sanitation solutions can support climate resiliency for the people who need it the most.

Read more about the connection between climate change and water access >

By 2025, 50% of the world’s population is projected to live in water-stressed areas as a result of climate change, with low-income families bearing the greatest burden of this crisis.

• World Health Organization and UNICEF. (2023). Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene 2000-2022: Special focus on gender.
• World Health Organization and UNICEF. (2020). Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Schools: Special focus on COVID-19.
• UN-Water. (2019). Policy Brief on Climate Change and Water.
• World Health Organization and UNICEF. (2020). State of the World's Sanitation: An urgent call to transform sanitation for better health, environments, economies and societies.
• Hutton, G., and M. Varughese. (2020). Global and Regional Costs of Achieving Universal Access to Sanitation to Meet SDG Target 6.2.
• World Health Organization. (2019). Burden of disease attributable to unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene.
• World Health Organization, UNICEF, and World Bank. (2022). State of the world’s drinking water: an urgent call to action to accelerate progress on ensuring safe drinking water for all.
• WaterAid. (2021). Mission-critical: Invest in water, sanitation and hygiene for a healthy and green economic recovery.

The water crisis affects millions around the world. Make an impact today.

Press release

Imminent risk of a global water crisis, warns the UN World Water Development Report 2023

Globally, 2 billion people (26% of the population) do not have safe drinking water and 3.6 billion (46%) lack access to safely managed sanitation, according to the report, published by UNESCO on behalf of UN-Water and released today at the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York.

Between two and three billion people experience water shortages for at least one month per year, posing severe risks to livelihoods, notably through food security and access to electricity. The global urban population facing water scarcity is projected to double from 930 million in 2016 to 1.7–2.4 billion people in 2050. The growing incidence of extreme and prolonged droughts is also stressing ecosystems, with dire consequences for both plant and animal species.

There is an urgent need to establish strong international mechanisms to prevent the global water crisis from spiraling out of control. Water is our common future and it is essential to act together to share it equitably and manage it sustainably.

Protecting and preserving this precious resource for future generations depends on partnerships. The smart management and conservation of the world’s water resources means bringing together governments, businesses, scientists, civil society and communities – including indigenous communities – to design and deliver concrete solutions. 

There is much to do and time is not on our side. This report shows our ambition and we must now come together and accelerate action. This is our moment to make a difference.

International cooperation: the key to access to water for all

Nearly every water-related intervention involves some kind of cooperation. Growing crops require shared irrigation systems among farmers. Providing safe and affordable water to cities and rural areas is only possible through a communal management of water-supply and sanitation systems. And cooperation between these urban and rural communities is essential to maintaining both food security and uphold farmer incomes.

Managing rivers and aquifers crossing international borders makes matters all the more complex. While cooperation over transboundary basins and aquifers has been shown to deliver many benefits beyond water security, including opening additional diplomatic channels, only 6 of the world’s 468 internationally shared aquifers are subject to a formal cooperative agreement.

On this World Water Day, the United Nations calls for boosting international cooperation over how water is used and managed. This is the only way to prevent a global water crisis in the coming decades.

Partnerships and people’s participation increase benefits

Environmental services, such as pollution control and biodiversity, are among the shared benefits most often highlighted in the report, along with data/information-sharing and co-financing opportunities. For example, ‘water funds’ are financing schemes that bring together downstream users, like cities, businesses, and utilities, to collectively invest in upstream habitat protection and agricultural land management to improve overall water quality and/or quantity.

Mexico’s Monterrey Water Fund, launched in 2013, has maintained water quality, reduced flooding, improved infiltration and rehabilitated natural habitats through co-financing. The success of similar approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the Tana-Nairobi river watershed, which supplies 95% of the Nairobi’s freshwater and 50% of Kenya’s electricity, illustrate the global potential of such partnerships.

Inclusive stakeholder participation also promotes buy-in and ownership. Involving the end-users in planning and implementing water systems creates services that better match the needs and resources of poor communities, and increases public acceptance and ownership. It also fosters accountability and transparency. In displacement camps in the Gedo region of Somalia, residents elect water committees that operate and maintain the waterpoints that supply tens of thousands of people. Committee members partner with local water authorities of the host communities to share and manage water resources.

The United Nations World Water Development Report is published by UNESCO on behalf of UN-Water and its production is coordinated by the UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme. The report gives insight into the main trends concerning the state, use and management of freshwater and sanitation, based on work by Members and Partners of UN-Water. Launched in conjunction with World Water Day, the report provides decision-makers with knowledge and tools to formulate and implement sustainable water policies. It also offers best practice examples and in-depth analyses to stimulate ideas and actions for better stewardship in the water sector and beyond.

Press contacts

UNESCO : François Wibaux, [email protected] , +33145680746 

UN-Water:  Daniella Bostrom Couffe, [email protected] , +41796609284

UNESCO WWAP:  Simona Gallese, [email protected] , +390755911026

Related items

• Natural sciences
• UN ＆ International cooperation
• Water resources
• Water supply
• World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP)
• World Water Day
• Country page: Switzerland
• Region: Europe and North America
• SDG: SDG 6 - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
• SDG: SDG 17 - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
• See more add

This article is related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals .

More on this subject

Other recent press releases

About . Click to expand section.

• Our History
• Team & Board
• Transparency and Accountability

What We Do . Click to expand section.

• Cycle of Poverty
• Climate & Environment
• Emergencies & Refugees
• Health & Nutrition
• Livelihoods
• Gender Equality
• Where We Work

Take Action . Click to expand section.

• Attend an Event
• Partner With Us
• Fundraise for Concern
• Work With Us
• Leadership Giving
• Humanitarian Training
• Newsletter Sign-Up

Donate . Click to expand section.

• Give Monthly
• Donate in Honor or Memory
• Leave a Legacy
• DAFs, IRAs, Trusts, & Stocks
• Employee Giving

Ten causes of the global water crisis

Mar 22, 2022

Nothing survives without water; it’s the most basic fact of life. Humans need a steady and clean supply of H2O to live, something which is becoming more and more difficult to come by.

Water affects our lives in countless ways . We use it to eat, to fuel our businesses, to keep our homes (and hands) clean… But less than 1% of the world’s water supply is usable to us. The rest is saltwater, ice, or underground. And we have to make that <1% last for 7.9 billion people. The global water crisis is proof that we’ve come up dry: The latest reports from the WHO and UNICEF show that over hundreds of millions of people are caught in a cycle of thirst — one that feeds into the cycle of poverty .

The global water crisis at a glance

• According to UN-Water 2.3 billion people live in water-stressed countries
• According to UNICEF, 1.42 billion people – including 450 million children – live in areas of high or extremely high water vulnerability
• 785 million people lack access to basic water services
• The WHO reports that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water
• Two-thirds of the world’s population experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year
• The Global Water Institute estimates that 700 million people could be displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030
• 3.2 billion people live in agricultural areas with high water shortages or scarcity
• Approximately 73% of people affected by water shortages live in Asia
• The global water crisis is a women’s issue : In what UNICEF calls “a colossal waste of time,” women and girls spend an estimated 200 million hours hauling water every day
• Diarrhea kills 2,195 children every day—more than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined—and can be caused by lack of access to clean water and sanitation services

Learn more about Concern’s response to the global water crisis

There are a number of root causes for our current water crisis, which in turn affect everything from harvests to public health. By addressing these causes, we can do better with the 1% we have.

1. Climate change

Unsurprisingly, climate change is one of the main reasons behind the global water crisis. The areas most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as Somalia’s decade-plus of drought or increasingly severe monsoons in Bangladesh , are often water-stressed to begin with. As the climate crisis continues to deepen, those resources become all the more scarce. One of the main causes of climate change, deforestation, leads to “heat islands” that impact the surrounding land. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 80% of farmland has been affected by soil degradation due to climate-related droughts. On the opposite end of the spectrum, rising sea levels are salinating freshwater sources, meaning that they’re no longer potable as-is.

2. Natural disasters

Whether related to climate change or not, according to one UNICEF report nearly 75% of all natural disasters between 2001 and 2018 were water-related. This includes droughts, but also floods — which can destroy or contaminate clean water sources for communities. This not only cuts people off from clean drinking water, but also opens up the risk for waterborne diseases like diarrhea. The frequency of these events are expected to increase as we continue to feel the effects of climate change.

3. War and conflict

The ongoing crisis in Syria has led to a well-developed middle-class country lapsing into a water crisis thanks to the destruction of its infrastructure. This poses a serious threat to public health for the millions of Syrians still living inside the country. Another protracted conflict in the Central African Republic has seen armed groups target village water-points and wells — much like hunger as a weapon of war , water can also be leveraged in times of violence.

4. Wastewater

Let’s talk about contaminated water and the role it plays in the global water crisis: Sometimes water can be plentiful in an area. But whether that water is safe to drink…that’s another story. Many areas of the world have poor systems for dealing with wastewater — water that is affected by human use, like washing dishes at home or used in an industrial process. At a global scale, 44% of household wastewater is reused without being treated, and 80% of wastewater overall flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, which by the UN’s numbers leaves 1.8 billion people using water that can be contaminated by feces, chemicals, or other contaminants that can prove toxic. Wastewater is one of the leading causes for many of the world’s most pervasive diseases, including cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and polio.

The average family can waste 180 gallons per week, or 9,400 gallons per year, due to household leaks.

5. Water waste

Different from wastewater, water waste is what happens when we ignore dripping faucets, over-water our lawns, or ignore the free tap water served to us at a restaurant. Some of these may seem like minor inconveniences, but they add up: Speaking with VOX, water management expert Shafiqul Islam estimates that these minor annoyances can account for anywhere between 30 and 40% of a city’s lost water. The average family can waste 180 gallons per week, or 9,400 gallons per year, due to household leaks. Add this all up and we’re looking at roughly 900 billion gallons of water lost annually.

In 2018, Cape Town managed to avert “Day Zero” — the day in which the city would need to turn off all water taps for its 4 million residents — by limiting water use and focusing on the necessities first.

6. Lack of water data

We know that data is never the most exciting entry on a list, but it’s still key: UN Water reports a lack of water quality data for over 3 billion people around the world. These are usually in areas where other factors on this list are at play, meaning that they’re at a credible risk for using non-potable water. Knowledge is power, and the only way we can ensure that we have a handle on the global water crisis is by ensuring that we know the health of all the world’s rivers, lakes, and groundwater reserves.

7. Lack of international cooperation on shared water sources

Many bodies of water sit across two or more countries, meaning that they’re effectively the subjects of joint-custody between nations. However, according to the latest update from the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals , only 24 countries report that all internationally-shared rivers, lakes, and groundwater sources are covered by cooperative arrangements. This means that, if one country is following all of the protocol necessary to keep its side of a lake clean, that may be irrelevant if the waters on the opposite shore are not being treated with the same degree of care.

8. Lack of infrastructure

It’s not that countries willingly mismanage their water supplies. Whether through deliberate destruction or unwitting mismanagement, many governments lack the infrastructure to properly invest in their water resources, allowing clean water to reach those that need it most. Losses related to water insecurity cost the US an estimated $470 billion per year . While water infrastructure is a resource that has high financial implications, the value of water is taken for granted. As the UN notes in its High Level Panel on Water, water “is typically capital intensive, long-lived with high sunk costs. It calls for a high initial investment followed by a very long payback period.”

Countless water points were left unusable due to violence, disrepair, and overuse in the Central African Republic with some water sources purposely contaminated by armed groups. Fortunately solutions don’t necessarily need to be high-tech. We’ve brought clean water solutions to villages using manually operated “village drills,” removing the need for electricity. They’re also 33% cheaper than typical mechanized drills, and can be transported to remote areas and assembled on site.

People power brings clean water to Central African Republic

Years of conflict have decimated wells in Central African Republic, putting the population at risk of disease from drinking dirty water. But with a little bit of innovation — and a lot of people power — communities in the Kouango region are finally getting access to clean water.

9. Forced migration and the refugee crisis

Even before the crisis in Ukraine uprooted 10 million people, we were facing unprecedented levels of displacement. In many of the world’s largest host communities , informal settlements for refugees create high-density areas of people, and can put pressure on available infrastructure. In many cases, people will cross the nearest open border to flee conflict or other crises, which often leaves them in areas that face similar climate events, or have similarly stressed resources. This is why water trucking — which is, effectively, exactly what it sounds like — is one of the key elements of Concern’s emergency response plans.

10. Inequality and an imbalance of power

Even in high-income countries, water management isn’t a priority as seen in budget allocations. It’s not the most photogenic issue, especially when you’re showing solutions in action, and “emergency food distribution” is a much easier concept to grasp compared to “watershed management.” This has led to an unacceptable imbalance between those setting federal and local government budgets — and foreign aid budgets — and those who are in the direst need of clean water and adequate sanitation. In 2015, the UN reported that, underlying all of the barriers to solving the water crisis, was one simple fact: “The people suffering the most from the water and sanitation crisis — poor people in general and poor women in particular — often lack the political voice needed to assert their claims to water.” This disparity in power and lack of representation has widened that chasm. Closing it is a critical step to ensuring clean water for all.

“The people suffering the most from the water and sanitation crisis — poor people in general and poor women in particular — often lack the political voice needed to assert their claims to water.”

The global water crisis: Concern’s response

Ensuring access to clean water and sanitation and providing hygiene information and training are key aspects of Concern’s work, with active water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programs in 18 countries. We have dug, drilled, and bored thousands of wells in remote and vulnerable communities across dozens of countries, and built countless latrines in their schools and health centers. The hours saved and the illnesses prevented make it one of the most effective things we do. 

When drought or displacement prevent access to clean water supplies, we do what it takes to connect communities, including trucking water to temporary tanks and installing pumps in camps. We work hand-in-hand with communities to help them assess the longstanding challenges they face, change behaviors, and ensure water and sanitation infrastructure will be maintained for the long term. And we foster a sense of ownership, build sustainable maintenance practices, and create transparent financial management systems that benefit the community.

One example of our approach can be seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo , where Concern has been the lead partner in a consortium that has already achieved some extraordinary results. Over the course of six years, our teams worked closely with 600 of the country’s most isolated communities to help them achieve sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions. The program reached over 650,000 people. 

Support Concern's work

Timeline: Breaking down more than a decade of drought in Somalia

Ten countries with water stress and scarcity — and how we're helping

With nearly 75% of Bangladesh underwater, can crisis be avoided?

Sign up for our newsletter.

Get emails with stories from around the world.

You can change your preferences at any time. By subscribing, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

• Ways to Give
• Contact an Expert
• Explore WRI Perspectives

Filter Your Site Experience by Topic

Applying the filters below will filter all articles, data, insights and projects by the topic area you select.

• All Topics Remove filter
• Climate filter site by Climate
• Cities filter site by Cities
• Energy filter site by Energy
• Food filter site by Food
• Forests filter site by Forests
• Freshwater filter site by Freshwater
• Ocean filter site by Ocean
• Business filter site by Business
• Economics filter site by Economics
• Finance filter site by Finance
• Equity & Governance filter site by Equity & Governance

Search WRI.org

Not sure where to find something? Search all of the site's content.

7 Reasons We're Facing a Global Water Crisis

Droughts in Somalia . Water rationing in Rome. Flooding in Jakarta and Harvey-battered Houston . It doesn't take a hydrologist to realize that there is a growing global water crisis. Each August, water experts, industry innovators, and researchers gather in Stockholm for World Water Week to tackle the planet's most pressing water issues.

What are they up against this year? Here's a quick rundown on the growing global water crisis.

1) We're Changing the Climate, Making Dry Areas Drier and Precipitation More Variable and Extreme.

Climate change is warming the planet , making the world's hottest geographies even more scorching. At the same time, clouds are moving away from the equator toward the poles, due to a climate-change driven phenomenon called Hadley Cell expansion . This deprives equatorial regions like sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central America of life-giving rainwater.

Paradoxically, climate change is also increasing precipitation in other areas, and people who live near rivers and streams have the most to lose. Currently, at least 21 million people worldwide are at risk of river flooding each year. That number could increase to 54 million by 2030 . All countries with the greatest exposure to river floods are least developed or developing countries – which makes them even more vulnerable to climate change and natural disasters. This summer, extreme flooding submerged over a third of Bangladesh, claiming over 115 lives and affecting 5.7 million citizens .

2) More People + More Money = More Water Demand.

It's a simple equation: As populations increase and incomes grow, so does water demand. The world's population, now at 7.5 billion, is projected to add 2.3 billion more people by 2050 . How can the planet satisfy their thirst? Growing incomes also exacerbate the water problem, because of the water-intensive products—like meat and energy from fossil fuels —that richer populations demand.

3) Groundwater Is Being Depleted.

About 30 percent of Earth's fresh water lies deep underground in aquifers. And it's extracted daily for farming, drinking and industrial processes – often at dangerously unsustainable rates. Nowhere is this more evident than India, which guzzles more groundwater than any other country . 54 percent of India's groundwater wells are decreasing, meaning that water is used faster than it's replenished. Unless patterns shift, in 20 years, 60 percent of India's aquifers will be in critical condition.

Unlike an incoming hurricane or a drained lake, the naked eye cannot see when groundwater reserves in aquifers are declining. Global water supplies are susceptible to this hidden and growing threat.

4) Water Infrastructure Is in a Dismal State of Disrepair.

Having enough water to go around is only the beginning. That water also needs to be transported, treated, and discharged. Around the world, water infrastructure―treatment plants, pipes, and sewer systems―is in a state of disrepair. In the United States, 6 billion gallons of treated water are lost per day from leaky pipes alone. Built infrastructure is notoriously expensive to install and repair, meaning that many localities ignore growing infrastructure issues until disaster strikes, as it did in California earlier this year.

5) And Natural Infrastructure Is Being Ignored.

Healthy ecosystems are " natural infrastructure " and vital to clean, plentiful water. They filter pollutants, buffer against floods and storms, and regulate water supply. Plants and trees are essential for replenishing groundwater; without them, rainfall will slide across dry land, instead of seeping into the soil. Loss of vegetation from deforestation, overgrazing and urbanization is limiting our natural infrastructure and the benefits that it provides. Forested watersheds around the world are under threat: watersheds have lost up to 22 percent of their forests in the past 14 years .

6) Water Is Wasted.

Although it's true that water is a renewable resource, it's often wasted. Inefficient practices like flood irrigation and water-intensive wet cooling at thermal power plants use more water than necessary. What's more, as we pollute our available water at an alarming rate, we also fail to treat it. About 80 percent of the world's wastewater is discharged back into nature without further treatment or reuse. In many countries , it's cheaper to receive clean drinking water than to treat and dispose of wastewater, which encourages water waste. This brings us to the next issue:

7) The Price Is Wrong.

Globally, water is seriously undervalued. Its price does not reflect the true, total cost of service, from its transport via infrastructure to its treatment and disposal. This has led to misallocation of water, and a lack of investments in infrastructure and new water technologies that use water more efficiently. After all, why would a company or government invest in expensive water-saving technologies, when water is cheaper than the technology in question? When the price of receiving clean water is closer to its actual service cost, efficient water use will be incentivized . And on the flip side, the poor often end up paying disproportionately high prices for water, stunting development.

It's Not Too Late

Amidst these seven deadly water sins, there is good news: governments, businesses, universities and citizens around the world are waking up to water challenges, and beginning to take action. Each year brings more solutions – like using wastewater for energy , using restoration to bring water back to dry topographies, and monitoring groundwater levels more closely. However, even the best solutions will not implement themselves. Along with fresh water, political will and public pressure are critical resources in ensuring a sustainable future for all.

Relevant Work

Signs of worry, signs of hope on world water day, 3 things cities can learn from cape town’s impending “day zero” water shut-off, water can exacerbate inequality—or it can help solve it, water stress is helping drive conflict and migration, how you can help.

WRI relies on the generosity of donors like you to turn research into action. You can support our work by making a gift today or exploring other ways to give.

Stay Informed

World Resources Institute 10 G Street NE Suite 800 Washington DC 20002 +1 (202) 729-7600

© 2024 World Resources Institute

Envision a world where everyone can enjoy clean air, walkable cities, vibrant landscapes, nutritious food and affordable energy.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Open access
• Published: 22 June 2021

The widespread and unjust drinking water and clean water crisis in the United States

• J. Tom Mueller   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6223-4505 1 &
• Stephen Gasteyer 2  

Nature Communications volume  12 , Article number:  3544 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

73k Accesses

115 Citations

502 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Water resources

An Addendum to this article was published on 13 June 2023

An Author Correction to this article was published on 13 June 2023

Many households in the United States face issues of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality. Prior scholarship on this issue has focused on one dimension of water hardship at a time, leaving the full picture incomplete. Here we begin to complete this picture by documenting incomplete plumbing and poor drinking water quality for the entire United States, as well as poor wastewater quality for the 39 states and territories where data is reliable. In doing so, we find evidence of a regionally-clustered, socially unequal household water crisis. Using data from the American Community Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency, we show there are 489,836 households lacking complete plumbing, 1,165 community water systems in Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violation, and 9,457 Clean Water Act permittees in Significant Noncompliance. Further, elevated levels of water hardship are associated with rurality, poverty, indigeneity, education, and age—representing a nationwide environmental injustice.

Similar content being viewed by others

Inequality of household water security follows a Development Kuznets Curve

Water conservation through plumbing and nudging

A state-by-state comparison of policies that protect private well users

Introduction.

Both in and out of the country, most presume that residents of the United States live with close to universal access to potable water and sanitation. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Tracker, which tracks progress toward meeting Sustainable Development Goal Number 6—calling for universal access to potable water and sanitation for all by 2030—estimates that 99.2% of the US population has continuous access to potable water and 88.9% has access to sanitation 1 . By percentages and the lived experience of most Americans, this appears accurate. The American Community Survey shows that from 2014 to 2018 only an estimated 0.41% of occupied US households lacked access to complete plumbing—meaning access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, and a bath or shower. Although this relative percentage may be low, this 0.41% corresponds to 489,836 households spread unevenly across the country, making the absolute number quite troubling. These numbers become even more dramatic when we broaden our scope to poor household water quality, where the estimates we provide in this paper show the issue affects a far greater share of the population (Table  1 ).

This study builds on a growing body of evidence showing access to plumbing, water quality, and basic sanitation are lacking for a disturbingly large number of US residents by providing a definitive picture of the ongoing household water crisis in the United States. Water and sanitation issues have been a growing concern in the United States, particularly among policy organizations, for the past 20 years 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 . For example, the now-dated Still Living without the Basics report used Census data from 2000 to show that more than 670,000 households (0.64% of households and 1.7 million people) lacked access to complete plumbing facilities 7 . Further, the Water Infrastructure Network published a report in 2004 citing a gap of $23 billion between available funding and needed water and sanitation infrastructure investments 6 . In line with this, the American Society of Civil Engineers has repeatedly given the United States a “D” grade for water infrastructure, and “D-” for wastewater infrastructure in their annual “Infrastructure Report Card” 11 . Although water hardship in the United States has experienced some academic attention, much of the work has become dated and has generally focused on a single dimension of the issue at a time—for example, recent scholarship has focused on exclusively incomplete plumbing 3 , 4 , 9 , water quality 5 , 10 , or on only urban parts of the country 2 . This has left our understanding of the scope of the issue incomplete. In this paper, we estimate and map the full scope of water hardship for the dimensions of incomplete plumbing and poor drinking water quality across the entire United States, while also estimating and mapping the scope of poor wastewater quality for the 39 states where EPA data is reliable, in order to complete this picture.

Prior work from academics and policy groups on dimensions of water hardship has found water access issues pattern along common social inequalities in the United States. The Natural Resources Defense Council released a report demonstrating the disproportionate impact on people of color posed by Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water Act regulatory burdens 12 , which built on similar peer reviewed findings 13 , 14 . Furthermore, both policy papers and peer reviewed studies have analyzed Census data to estimate the population lacking access to complete plumbing facilities and clean water 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 12 . The studies suggest low-income and non-White people—particularly indigenous populations who continue to face injustices related to legacies of settler colonialism 15 —are significantly more likely to have incomplete plumbing and unclean water 3 , 12 . Further, it appears incomplete plumbing may be a disproportionately rural issue, while poor water quality may be a disproportionately urban issue 5 , 9 . Direct comparisons, as we perform here, are needed to fully establish the variability of this inequality between dimensions of water hardship.

The prior scholarship on the inequitable distribution of plumbing and pollution speaks to the well-documented environmental injustices found throughout the United States. Environmental injustice, meaning the absence of “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” (p. 558) 16 , has been documented in the United States along the social dimensions of income 17 , 18 , poverty 19 , race and ethnicity 20 , 21 , age 22 , education 22 , 23 , and rurality 22 , 24 , 25 . Based on the evidence of prior work on water hardship, it is clear household water access represents an ongoing environmental injustice in the United States 5 . However, the specific dimensions of this injustice, and how they vary between type of water hardship remain largely unknown. To address this gap, we estimate models of water injustice for the previously identified social dimensions at the county level for elevated levels of both incomplete plumbing and poor water quality.

Level of water hardship in the United States

Based upon the most recent available data reported by both the United States Census Bureau via the American Community Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency via Enforcement and Compliance History Online, we find that incomplete plumbing and poor water quality affects millions of Americans as of 2014–2018 and August 2020, respectively (Table  1 ) 26 , 27 . A total of 0.41% of households, or 489,836 households, lacked complete plumbing from 2014–2018 in the United States. Further, 509 counties, representing over 13 million Americans, have an elevated level of the issue where >1% of household do not have complete indoor plumbing (Table  2 ). Thus, even if individuals are not experiencing the issue themselves, they may live in a community where incomplete plumbing is a serious issue.

The portion of the population affected by poor water quality is much greater than that of incomplete plumbing. Poor water quality in our analysis is indicated in two ways, (1) Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators and (2) Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance. For the first, community water systems are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act and are scored based on their violation and compliance history, those community water systems that are the most problematic are recorded as Serious Violators by the Environmental Protection Agency 27 . Second, any facility that discharges directly into waters in the United States is issued a Clean Water Act permit. Those which “hold a more severe level of environmental threat” are ruled as being in Significant Noncompliance 27 . Importantly, although data on Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators is available nationwide, the Clean Water Act data reported by the EPA is known to be inaccurate for 13 states. Thus, although we can draw national conclusions for incomplete plumbing and Safe Drinking Water Act violations, our understanding of Clean Water Act violations is limited to the 39 states and territories for which data are available and reliable.

Using these two measures of poor water quality, we find 2.44% of community water systems, a total of 1165, were Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators and 3.37% of Clean Water Act permittees in the 39 states and territories with accurate data (see Methods for more details), a total of 9457, were in Significant Noncompliance as of 18 August 2020. At the county level, this corresponds to an average of 2.86% of county community water systems being listed as Safe Drinking Water Act Significant Violators and an average of 6.23% of county Clean Water Act permittees being listed as Significant Noncompliers. Due to limitations in the data, we are unable to determine exactly how many individuals are linked to each problematic community water system or Clean Water Act permittee, however, we do find that over 81 million Americans live in counties where >1% of community water systems are listed as Significant Violators, and more than 153 million Americans in the 39 reliable states and territories live in counties where greater than one percent of Clean Water Act permittees are Significant Noncompliers. Thus, although the number of individuals impacted by these issues is certainly far smaller than these totals, a vast number of Americans live in communities where issues of water quality are elevated.

Due to our conservative approach of removing all states with Clean Water Act data issues, we test the sensitivity of our estimates by also calculating supplemental estimates of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance under two counterfactual scenarios. In the first, we include the data as-is from the EPA for all counties in the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, and in the second, we duplicate the counties in the top and bottom 20% of Significant Noncompliance in states without data issues—with the rationale being that the 945 counties removed due to poor data represented roughly 40% of the total counties remaining when problems states were removed. Thus, this attempts to simulate total counts if those removed were balanced between very high and very low levels of noncompliance. Results using all EPA data increase national estimates of Significant Noncompliance (Tables 3 and 4 ), with the total percent of permittees in this status jumping from 3.37% to 6.01%. While the duplication test does raise our estimates, it is not nearly as dramatic, with the percent of permittees in Significant Noncompliance only rising to 3.87%. These results make sense given that the most common reason for data issues was an overreporting of noncompliance within states.

When looking at the issue spatially, we can see that while water hardship affects all parts of the country to some degree, the issues are clustered in space (Figs.  1 – 3 ). Importantly, the clustering varies between each water issue. Incomplete plumbing is clustered in the Four Corners, Alaska, Puerto Rico, the borderlands of Texas, and parts of Appalachia (Fig.  1 ); Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators are clustered in Appalachia, New Mexico, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Intermountain West (Fig.  2 ); and Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance clearly follows state boundaries—likely speaking to variable monitoring by state. Although spatial representation is limited by the absence of 13 states with inaccurate EPA data, we can still see that Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance is clustered in the Intermountain West, the Upper Midwest, Appalachia, and the lower Mississippi (Fig. 3 ). These regional clusters persist when we include the problem states, which is visible in the map included in the Supplemental Information (Supplementary Figure 1 ).

Households are determined to have incomplete plumbing if they do not have access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, a bath or shower, and—up until 2016—a flush toilet.

Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators are those community water systems regarded by the Environmental Protection Agency as the most problematic due to violation and compliance history.

All facilities that discharge directly into water of the United States are issued a Clean Water Act permit, those who represent a more severe level of environmental threat due to violations and noncompliance are considered in Significant Noncompliance.

Water injustice modeling

Although we can easily see clustering by space in Figs.  1 through 3 , the maps do not tell us whether or not incomplete plumbing and poor water quality are also clustered by social dimensions, which would represent an environmental injustice. To assess this social clustering, we estimate linear probability models of elevated levels of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality with the previously identified environmental justice dimensions of age, income, poverty, race, ethnicity, education, and rurality as our independent variables. We include these independent variables due to their prevalence within prior work on environmental injustice in both rural and urban areas 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 . Further, although there is not a one-to-one overlap, these variables conceptually map onto the dimensions of the Center for Disease Control Social Vulnerability Index: Socioeconomic Status (i.e. income, poverty, education), Household Composition & Disability (i.e. age), Minority Status & Language (i.e. race and ethnicity), and Housing & Transportation (i.e. rurality) 28 .

For each outcome, we first estimate purely descriptive models with only one dimension of injustice included at a time, and then estimate a full model with all dimensions included. The outcomes are dichotomous measures of whether or not a county had >1% of households with incomplete plumbing, >1% of community water systems listed as Serious Violators, or >1% of Clean Water Act permittees in Significant Noncompliance. All descriptive statistics for the dichotomous outcomes are presented in Table 2 . Descriptive statistics for the continuous independent variables are presented in Supplementary Information (Supplementary Table  1 ). Here we present the outcomes of the purely descriptive models visually in Fig.  4 and discuss the full models in the narrative. Full regression results, including exact 95% confidence intervals and p -values, for all models are available in Supplementary Information (Supplementary Tables  2 , 3 and 4 ).

Different colors for plotted coefficients represent separate blocks of variables. Models are linear probability models with state fixed effects and cluster-robust standard errors at the state level. All tests two-tailed. Dots indicate point estimates and lines represent 95% confidence intervals. Models predicted elevated levels of each dimension of water hardship. For incomplete plumbing this is indicated by >1% of households in a county having incomplete plumbing ( N  = 3219). For Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Serious Violation this is indicated by >1% of active community water systems being considered Serious Violators ( N  = 3143). For Clean Water Act (CWA) Significant Non-Compliance this is indicated by >1% of Clean Water Act permittees being considered in Significant Non-Compliance ( N  = 2261). Full model results, confidence intervals, and exact p -values available in SI.

We find elevated levels of incomplete plumbing at the county level were significantly ( p  < 0.05) associated with older populations, lower income, higher poverty, greater portions of indigenous people (American Indian, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islanders), lower levels of education, and more rural counties (Fig.  4 ). A great deal of these associations persisted in a full model with all dimensions of injustice (Supplementary Table  2 ). The only differences between the full model and the series of purely descriptive models were that income, percent with at least a bachelor’s degree, and non-metropolitan metropolitan adjacency were no longer significantly associated with elevated levels of incomplete plumbing. This indicates that the inequalities in plumbing access along the dimensions of age, poverty, indigeneity, low education, and extreme rurality persist at the county level, even when accounting for the other dimensions of environmental injustice.

The models for elevated levels of Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violators indicated less social inequality than the models for incomplete plumbing. The purely descriptive models found elevated levels of Serious Violators were associated with higher income, higher poverty, and metropolitan counties (Fig.  4 ). The full model had minor variation, with median household income no longer being significant in the model (Supplementary Table  3 ). Thus, the full model shows that the association between elevated levels of Serious Violators and higher poverty and metropolitan status persists even when considering other social dimensions.

We see the fewest indicators of water injustice for elevated levels of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance—which only include counties within the 39 states and territories with accurate data. In the purely descriptive models, we find older populations, more Latino/a counties, less educated counties, and remote rural counties were significant less likely to have elevated levels of noncompliance (Fig. 4 ). In the full model, the association for education is no longer significant but age, Latino/a, and rurality remain (Supplementary Table 4 ). Similar to our national estimates, we also conducted model sensitivity tests using the same scenarios described above. As shown in Fig. 5 , neither scenario substantively changes our conclusions, with the only changes in significance being for percent Latino/a and percent without a high school diploma—both of which were only marginally significant in our primary models ( p  > 0.01).

Descriptive regression model results. Different colors for plotted coefficients represent separate blocks of variables. Models are linear probability models with state fixed effects and Huber/White/Sandwich cluster-robust standard errors at the state level. All tests are two-tailed. Dots indicate point estimates and lines represent 95% confidence intervals. Models predicted whether or not there were greater than 1% of Clean Water Act permittees being considered in Significant Noncompliance in the county. First model excludes counties in states with CWA data issues ( N  = 2261), second model includes all counties reported by the EPA ( N  = 3206), third model duplicates counties in the top and bottom 10% of CWA Significant Noncompliance within states without data issues ( N  = 3151). Full model results, confidence intervals, and exact p values available in SI.

Our findings demonstrate that the problem of water hardship in the United States is hidden, but not rare. Indeed, millions live in counties where more than 1 out of 100 occupied households lack complete plumbing. Millions more live in places with chronic Safe Drinking Water Act violations and Clean Water Act noncompliance. We present this paper to help sound the alarm of this significant household water crisis in the United States. Although the relative share of Americans experiencing this problem is low, the absolute number of people dealing with incomplete plumbing—a total of 489,836 households—and poor water quality—1165 community water systems nationwide and 9457 Clean Water Act permittees in the 39 accurate states and territories—remains quite high. Further, given the water infrastructure of the United States, consistently deemed as poor by experts 6 , 11 , if action is not taken the situation may only get worse.

These findings are even more concerning when considering that water hardship is spread unevenly across both space and society, reflecting the spatial patterning of social inequality due to settler colonialism, racism, and economic inequality in the United States. Figures  1 , 2 , and 3 document the clear regional clustering of these issues and our models of environmental injustice demonstrate the social inequalities found for this form of hardship. Particularly in the case of incomplete plumbing, we find significant environmental injustice at the county level along the social dimensions of age, income, poverty, indigeneity, education, and rurality. These associations certainly stem from multiple causal pathways—for example associations with indigeneity likely stem from legacies of injustice as well as ongoing policies placing limitations on land use and infrastructure development on American Indian reservations 15 . Remedying these injustices will require careful attention to the root causes of the problem. It is important to note that the signs of injustice for poor water quality were less clear than for incomplete plumbing, with far fewer significant associations. Further, the minimal support for injustice in the case of Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance was evident in all three specifications of counties in our sensitivity tests. Suggesting that the removal of the states with data issues did little to impact coefficient estimates. These differences between dimensions of water hardship highlight the nuance between each of these specific forms of water hardship, and suggest a one-size-fits-all approach to remedying this crisis is unlikely to be effective. This need for place-based policy is made stark when we view the obvious state level differences in Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance in Fig. 3 . A clear direction for future work is to investigate the cause of these notable state-level differences.

The household water access and quality crisis we have identified here is solvable. Policy is needed to specifically address these issues and bring this problem into the spotlight. However, as indicated by the persistently high levels of Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violation and Clean Water Act Significant Noncompliance, any policy put in place must be enforceable and strong. As it currently stands, counties with elevated levels of incomplete plumbing and poor water quality in America—which are variously likely to be more indigenous, less educated, older, and poorer—are continuing to slip through the cracks.

Data sources

Data for this analysis were extracted from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates for 2014–2018 via Integrated Public Use Microdata Series – National Historic Geographic information System (IPUMS-NHGIS) 26 , and from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) Exporter 27 . Data were extracted at the county level for all 50 states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico–the two non-state entities with available data. The ACS is an ongoing survey of the United States which documents a wide variety of social statistics ranging from simple population counts to housing characteristics. Due to the staggered sampling structure of the ACS, it takes 5 years for every county to be sampled. Because of this, researchers must use 5-year intervals to ensure complete data coverage. The data from these 5 years are projected into estimates for all counties in the United States for the 5-year period in question. As of this study, 2014–2018 was the most recently available data.

ECHO collates data from EPA-regulated facilities across the United States of America to report compliance, violation, and penalty information for all facilities for the most recent 5-year interval. ECHO data is updated weekly and the data for this paper was extracted on 18 August 2020. This means that the data in our analysis represents the status of each community water system or Clean Water Act permittee, as reported by the EPA, as of 18 August 2020. Only those community water systems or Clean Water Act permittees listed as Active by ECHO were included in this analysis. As ECHO data is at the level of the water system, permittee, or utility, we aggregated data up to the county level.

Safe Drinking Water Act data was geolocated using QGIS 3.10 based upon latitude and longitude. This was done because other geographic identifiers for the Safe Drinking Water Act data were often missing. In line with prior work 4 , 5 , 7 , 8 , and in order to facilitate a cleaner dataset, we only focus on those water systems labeled community water systems for our analysis. Community water systems were geolocated based upon the county in which their latitude and longitude were located, if a community water system had latitude and longitude over water, a nearest neighbor join was used. In total, 1334 out of 49,479 community water systems were dropped because of there being no reported latitude or longitude. Of these, a total of 4.0%, or 54 community waters systems, were reported as in serious violation. It should be noted that the EPA is aware of a small number of water systems in Washington for which ECHO data may be inaccurate. However, since this is a small number and it is not listed as a ‘Primary Data Alert,’ we retain all states in this portion of the analysis. Finally, the EPA is generally aware that there are “inaccuracies and underreporting of some data in this system,” which is listed as a Primary Data Alert 27 . However, due to the lack of specifics, we cannot exclude inaccurate cases. Thus, our analysis should be viewed as reflecting drinking water quality is as reported by the EPA in August of 2020, which may reflect some level of inaccuracy.

Active Clean Water Act permittees were first identified by listed county. This was done because 345,176 out of 350,476 permittees had a county reported. Those without a county reported were located using latitude and longitude in the same manner as community water systems. There were 10 permittees without latitude and longitude or county listed which were excluded from our analysis. Of these, seven were in significant noncompliance and three were not. Due to some Clean Water Act permittees having latitude and longitude placements far away from the United States, those over 100 km from their nearest county were excluded from analysis. Unfortunately, ECHO data for the Clean Water Act data during the study period is inaccurate for 13 states. Although the nature of the inaccuracy varies from state to state, these issues generally stem from difficulties in transferring state data into the federal system. Due to this, these states appear to have far more permittees in Significant Noncompliance than are actually in violation. To address this issue, we removed all counties within these states from our Clean Water Act analysis. The impacted states include Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming 29 . Finally, for community water systems and Clean Water Act permittees, some counties (76 for community water systems and 5 for Clean Water Act permittees) had no reported cases. Those counties were treated as zeroes for cartography and as missing for modeling purposes.

Similar to prior work in this area 4 , 5 , 8 , we restrict our analysis to the scale of the county for reasons related to data limitations and resulting conceptual validity. Although counties are arguably larger in geographic area than ideal for an environmental injustice analysis, if we were to use a smaller unit for which data is available such as the census tract, the conceptual validity of the analysis would be limited due to the apolitical nature of these units. As outlined above, ECHO data is messy and missing many geographic identifiers. What is provided is generally either the county or latitude and longitude. If only the county is provided, then we are constrained to using the county regardless of conceptual validity. However, even when latitude and longitude are provided—which is the case for many observations—the provided point location says nothing about which households the water system or permittee serves or impacts. Due to this, whatever geographic unit we use carries the assumption that those in the unit could be plausibly impacted by the water system or permittee. Given that counties are often responsible for both regulating drinking water, as well as maintaining and providing water infrastructure 30 , we were comfortable with this assumption between point location and presumed spatial impact when using the scale of the county. However, we believe this assumption would have been invalid and untestable for smaller apolitical units for which demographic data is available such as census tracts.

Beyond the issues presented by ECHO data, the county is also the appropriate scale of analysis for this study due to the estimate-based nature of the ACS. ACS estimates are based on a rolling 5-year sample structure and often have very large margins of error. At the census tract level, these standard errors can be massive, especially in rural areas 31 , 32 , 33 . Due to this variation, and the need to include all rural areas in this analysis, the county, where the margins of error are considerably smaller, is the appropriate unit for this study. All of this said, the county is, in fact, a larger unit than often desired or used in environmental justice studies. Studies focused on exclusively urban areas with clearer pathways of impact can and should use smaller units such as census tracts. It will be imperative for future scholarship focused on water hardship across the rural-urban continuum to gain access to reliable data on sub-county political units, as well as data linking water systems to users, to continue documenting and pushing for water justice.

Dependent variables

The dependent variables for this analysis were assessed in both a continuous and dichotomous format. For descriptive results and mapping, continuous measures were used. For models of water injustice, a dichotomous measure which classified counties as either having low levels of the specific water issue or elevated levels of the specific water issue, was used due to the low relative frequency of water access and quality issues relative to the whole United States population. For all three outcomes, we benchmark an elevated level of the issue as what would be viewed as an unacceptable level under United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6.1, which states, “by 2030 achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all” 1 . As this goal focuses on ensuring all people have safe water, we deem a county as having an elevated level of the issue if >1% of households, community water systems, or permittees had incomplete plumbing, were in Significant Violation, or Significant Noncompliance, respectively. Although we could have used an even stricter threshold given the SDG’s emphasis on ensuring access for all people, we use 1% as our cut-off due to its nominal value and ease of interpretation.

For water access, the continuous measure was the percent of households in a county with incomplete household plumbing as reported by the ACS. The ACS currently asks respondents if they have access to hot and cold water, a sink with a faucet, and a bath or shower. Up until 2016, the question also included a flush toilet 34 . As we must use the most recent 2014–2018 5-year estimates to establish full coverage of all counties, this means that incomplete plumbing in this item may, or may not include a flush toilet depending on when the specific county was sampled. The dichotomous version of this variable benchmarked elevated levels of incomplete plumbing as whether or not 1% or more of households in a county had incomplete plumbing.

Water quality was assessed via both community water systems from the Safe Drinking Water Act, and from permit data via the Clean Water Act. For Safe Drinking Water Act data, the continuous measure was the percent of community water systems within a county classified as a Safe Drinking Water Act Serious Violator at time of data extraction. The EPA assigns point values of either 1, 5, or 10 based upon the severity of violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. A Serious Violator is one who has “an aggregate score of at least eleven points as a result of some combination of: unresolved more serious violations (such as maximum contaminant level violations related to acute contaminants), multiple violations (health-based, monitoring and reporting, public notification and/or other violations), and/or continuing violations” 27 . The dichotomous measure benchmarked elevated rates of Safe Drinking Water Act Significant Violation as whether or not >1% of county community water systems were classified as Serious Violators.

For Clean Water Act permit data, the continuous measure was the percent of permit holders listed as in Significant Noncompliance at the time of data extraction. Significant Noncompliance in the Clean Water Act refers to those permit holders who may pose a “more severe level of environmental threat” and is based upon both pollution levels and reporting compliance 27 . The dichotomous measure again set the threshold for elevated levels of poor water quality at whether or not >1% of Clean Water Act permittees in a county were listed as in Significant Noncompliance at time of data extraction.

Independent variables

The independent variables we include in models of water injustice are those frequently shown to be related to environmental injustice in the United States. These include age, income, poverty, race, ethnicity, education, and rurality 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 . Age was included as median age. Income was included as median household income. Poverty was the poverty rate of the county as determined by the official poverty measure of the United States 35 . Race and ethnicity was included as percent non-Latino/a Black, percent non-Latino/a indigenous, and percent Latino/a. Because the focus was on indigeneity, percent American Indian or Alaska Native was collapsed with Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. We did not include percent non-Latino/a white due to issues of multicollinearity. Finally, rurality was included as a three-category county indicator of metropolitan, non-metropolitan metropolitan-adjacent, and non-metropolitan remote, as determined by the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 36 . The OMB determines a county is metropolitan if it has a core urban area of 50,000 or more people, or is connected to a core metropolitan county by a 25% or greater share of commuting 36 . A non-metropolitan county is simply any county not classified as metropolitan. Non-metropolitan metropolitan adjacent counties are those which immediately border a metropolitan county, and non-metropolitan remote counties are those that do not.

Water injustice modeling approach

Water injustice was assessed by estimating linear probability models for the three dichotomous outcome variables with state fixed effects to control for the visible state level heterogeneity and differences in policy, reporting, and enforcement (e.g. the clear state boundary effects in Fig.  3 ). We employ the conventional Huber/White/Sandwich cluster-robust standard errors at the state level—which account for heteroskedasticity while also producing a consistent standard error estimate in-light of the lack of independence found between counties in the same state. All modeling was performed in Stata 16.0 and mapping was performed in QGIS 3.10. We assessed all full models for multicollinearity via condition index and VIF values and the independent variables had an acceptable condition index of 5.48 for incomplete plumbing and Safe Drinking Water Act models and 5.63 for Clean Water Act models, well below the conservative cut-off of 15, as well as VIF values of <10. We initially included percent non-Latino/a white as an independent variable, but removed the item due to unacceptably high condition index levels (>20). All indications of statistical significance are at the p  < 0.05 level and 95% confidence intervals and exact p -values of all estimates are provided in Supplementary Information. Each dependent variable was analyzed through a series of six models. First, we estimated separate purely descriptive models, where the only independent variables included were those associated with that specific dimension and the state fixed effects, for all five dimensions of environmental injustice. After estimating these five models, we estimated a full model including all social dimensions at once.

The reason for this approach was to ensure that we provided a robust descriptive understanding of the on-the-ground social patterns of water hardship, in addition to a full model showing the strongest social correlates of this issue. For example, if when we only included income variables we found that incomplete plumbing is less likely in counties with higher median incomes, but this effect goes away when we include other social variables, this does not remove the fact that there is an unequal distribution of incomplete plumbing by income on-the-ground. All that it means is that this income effect does not persist over and above the other social dimensions of environmental injustice. It may be that once other dimensions such as structural racism, captured by race and ethnicity variables, are considered, income is no longer a significant predictor. However, at a pure associational level, incomplete plumbing would still be unequally distributed by income on-the-ground. In fact, this is exactly what we find for incomplete plumbing (Supplementary Table  2 ). Due to this, both the pure descriptive and full models are needed for full understanding. Complete tables of all results are presented in the Supplementary Information File (Supplementary Tables  1 through 4 ).

Sensitivity tests

Due to our conservative approach to remove all problem states from the Clean Water Act portion of our analysis, we conducted a series of sensitivity tests wherein we generated national estimates of Significant Noncompliance, as well as models of elevated Significant Noncompliance under two scenarios (Supplementary Tables 5 and 6 ). In the first scenario we include all data reported by the EPA, meaning that we use all data for the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, regardless of any EPA data flags. In the second scenario, we replaced the data lost when dropping states by duplicating the counties in the top and bottom 20% of significant violations in the remaining counties. The top and bottom 20% was chosen because the 945 counties removed when the 13 states were dropped was roughly equal to 40% of the remaining 2262 counties. This counterfactual allows us to get closer to a plausible estimate of the absolute scope of CWA Significant Noncompliance by adopting a scenario where the counties dropped in problem states were either very high, or very low in terms of Significant Noncompliance. Functionally, duplicating the bottom 20% posed a challenge because the bottom 30% of counties had zero permittees in Significant Noncompliance. This zero-bias is one of the primary reasons why our outcome variable was dichotomized. To address this, we randomly selected two-thirds of these counties for duplication using a seeded pseudorandom number generator in Stata. Following duplication of cases, all estimates and models were generated in the same manner as the primary models of this study.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the  Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

The raw and geolocated datasets are publicly available on the Open Science Framework project for this study at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZPQR9 ( https://osf.io/zpqr9/ ).

Code availability

Analysis code is available on the Open Science Framework project for this study at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZPQR9 ( https://osf.io/zpqr9/ ). As the raw data was not geolocated using a code-based operation, code for this portion of the analysis is not available. However, the raw data is posted, and should researchers wish they will be able to use our description provided here to replicate geolocation using the GIS software of their choice. All other elements of the analysis are easily replicated via our provided code. As the both the raw and geolocated datasets are provided, replication of our analysis should be straightforward.

SDG Tracker. 2016. Water and Sanitation https://sdg-tracker.org/water-and-sanitation . Accessed 23 September 2020.

Capone, D., Cumming, O., Nichols, D. & Brown, J. Water and sanitation in Urban America, 2017–2019. Am. J. Public Health 110 , 1567–1572 (2020).

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Deitz, S. & Meehan, K. Plumbing poverty: mapping hot spots of racial and geographic inequality in U.S. household water insecurity. Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr. 109 , 1092–1109 (2019).

Google Scholar  

Gasteyer, S. P., Lai, J., Tucker, B., Carrera, J. & Moss, J. “Basics inequality: race and access to complete plumbing facilities in the United States.”. Du Bois Rev. 13 , 305–325 (2016).

Article   Google Scholar  

McDonald, Y. J. & Jones, N. E. Drinking water violations and environmental justice in the United States, 2011–2015. Am. J. Public Health 108 , 1401–1407 (2018).

Water Infrastructure Network. Clean And Safe Water For The 21st Century (NACWA, 2004). http://www.win-water.org/reports/winreport2000.pdf . Accessed 21 September 2020.

Rural Community Assistance Partnership. Still Living Without The Basics In The 21 st Century: Analyzing The Availability Of Water And Sanitation Services In The United States . https://www.rcap.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still-Living-Without-the-Basics-Water.pdf (2004). accessed September 24, 2020.

Allaire, M., Wu, H. & Lall, U. National trends in drinking water quality violations. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115 , 2078–2083 (2018).

Article   ADS   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Roller, Z., Gasteyer, S., Nelson, N., Lai, W. & Shingne, M. Closing The Water Access Gap In The United States: A National Action Plan (Dig Deep and US Water Alliance, 2019).

Marcillo, C. E. & Krometis, L. A. H. Small towns, big challenges: does rurality influence Safe Drinking Water Act compliance? AWWA Water Sci. 1 , e1120 (2019).

American Society of Civil Engineers. The American Infrastructure Report Card: Drinking Water Infrastructure https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_water/ (2020). Accessed 21 September 2020.

Fedinick, K. P. & Michele, R. Watered Down Justice: Communities Of Color And The SDWA (Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), 2019).

Switzer, D. & Teodoro, M. Class, race, ethnicity, and justice in safe drinking water compliance. Soc. Sci. Q. 99 , 524–535 (2018).

Teodoro, M., Haidar, M. & Switzer, D. U.S. environmental policy implementation on tribal lands: trust, neglect, and justice. Policy Stud. J. 46 , 37–49 (2018).

Eggers, M. J. et al. Community engaged cumulative risk assessment of exposure to inorganic well water contaminants, Crow Reservation, Montana. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 15 , 76 (2018).

Bullard, R. D. & Johnson, G. S. Environmentalism and public policy: environmental justice: grassroots activism and its impact on public policy decision making. J. Soc. Issues 56 , 555–578 (2000).

Brulle, R. J. & Pellow, D. N. Environmental justice: human health and environmental inequalities. Annu. Rev. Public Health 27 , 103–124 (2006).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Agyeman, J., Schlosberg, D., Craven, L. & Matthews, C. Trends and directions in environmental justice: from inequity to everyday life, community, and just sustainabilities. Ann. Rev. Environ. Resour. 41 , 321–340 (2016).

Mohai, P. & Saha, R. Which came first, people or pollution? A review of theory and evidence from longitudinal environmental justice studies. Environ. Res. Lett. 10 , 125011 (2015).

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

Mohai, P. & Saha, R. Reassessing racial and socioeconomic disparities in environmental justice research. Demography 43 , 383–399 (2006).

United Church of Christ. Commission for Racial Justice. Toxic Wastes And Race In The United States: A National Report On The Racial And Socio-economic Characteristics Of Communities With Hazardous Waste Sites . Public Data Access (1987).

Mueller, J. T. & Brooks, M. M. Burdened by renewable energy? A multi-scalar analysis of distributional justice and wind energy in the United States. Energy Res. Soc. Sci. 63 , 101406 (2020).

Cutter, S. L., Boruff, B. J. & Shirley, W. L. Social vulnerability to environmental hazards. Soc. Sci. Q. 84 , 242–261 (2003).

Ashwood, L. & MacTavish, K. Tyranny of the majority and rural environmental injustice. J. Rural Stud. 47 , 271–277 (2016).

Walker, C., Mason, S. & Bednar, D. 2018. Sustainable development and environmental injustice in rural Ontario, Canada: cases of wind energy and biosolid processing, J. Rural Community Dev. 13 110–129 (2018).

Manson, S. S., Chroeder, J., Van Riper, D. & Ruggles, S. 2020. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information system: Version 15.0, IPUMS, Minneapolis, MN https://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V15.0 (2020).

ECHO. Enforcement and Compliance History Online Exporter Version 2.0. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Data Extracted 18 August 2020. https://echo.epa.gov/tools/data-downloads (2020).

Flanagan, B. E., Hallisey, E. J., Adams, E. & Lavery, A. Measuring community vulnerability to natural and anthropogenic hazards: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index. J. Environ. Health 80 , 34 (2018).

PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

United States Environmental Protection Agency. Enforcement and Compliance History Online: Known Data Problems . Accessed at https://echo.epa.gov/resources/echo-data/known-data-problems (2022). Accessed 31 January 2021.

National Association of Counties. Water Quality Management at the County Level. Technical Report https://www.naco.org/sites/default/files/documents/water-quality.pdf (2017). Accessed 19 February 2021.

Bazuin, J. T. & Fraser, J. C. How the ACS gets it wrong: the story of the American Community Survey and a small, inner city neighborhood. Appl. Geogr. 45 , 292–302 (2013).

Folch, D. C., Arribas-Bel, D., Koschinsky, J. & Spielman, S. E. Spatial variation in the quality of American Community Survey estimates. Demography 53 , 1535–1554 (2016).

Spielman, S. E., Folch, D. & Nagle, N. Patterns and causes of uncertainty in the American Community Survey. Appl. Geogr. 46 , 147–157 (2014).

U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). American Community Survey: Why We Ask Questions About Plumbing Facilities, Kitchen Facilities, Telephone Services . https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/plumbing/ . Accessed 24 September 2020.

Iceland, J. Measuring poverty: theoretical and empirical considerations. Meas. Interdiscip. Res. Perspect. 3 , 199–235 (2005).

Office of Management and Budget. 2010 Standard For Delineating Metropolitan And Micropolitan Statistical Areas; Notice. Technical Report. Executive Office of the President of the United States (2010).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Tom Dietz, Lauren Mullenbach, Matthew Brooks, and Jan Beecher for their feedback on this manuscript. They would also like to thank Colleen Keltz at the Washington State Department of Ecology for alerting us to the issues with Clean Water Act data for Washington and other states.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

J. Tom Mueller

Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Stephen Gasteyer

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

Conceptualization: J.T.M. and S.G.; methodology: J.T.M.; formal analysis: J.T.M.; data curation: J.T.M.; writing- original draft preparation: J.T.M. and S.G.; writing – review and editing: J.T.M. and S.G.; visualization: J.T.M.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to J. Tom Mueller .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Communications thanks Benjamin Rachunok and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information, peer review file, reporting summary, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Mueller, J.T., Gasteyer, S. The widespread and unjust drinking water and clean water crisis in the United States. Nat Commun 12 , 3544 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23898-z

Download citation

Received : 05 November 2020

Accepted : 19 May 2021

Published : 22 June 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23898-z

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

This article is cited by

Poor housing quality and the health of newborns and young children.

• Tamás Hajdu
• Gábor Kertesi
• Bence Szabó

Scientific Reports (2024)

Self-reported anticipated harm from drinking water across 141 countries

• Joshua D. Miller
• Chad Staddon
• Sera L. Young

Nature Communications (2024)

Trends and disparities in concurrent tap water avoidance and household food insecurity among US children

• Asher Y. Rosinger

Nature Water (2024)

Sustainable wastewater reuse for agriculture

• Anastasis Christou
• Vasiliki G. Beretsou
• Despo Fatta-Kassinos

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2024)

Reused water as a source of clean water and energy

• Cecilia Tortajada

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Water Crisis in India – Explained Pointwise

ForumIAS announcing GS Foundation Program for UPSC CSE 2025-26 from 10th August. Click Here for more information.

The recent Bengaluru water crisis has put the spotlight again on the looming water crisis in India. Water starved Bengaluru is facing the looming threat of Day Zero (when government will shut down water connections for homes and businesses). A BBC report , based on UN-projections, had listed Bengaluru in the second position after Brazil’s São Paulo among the 11 global cities that are likely to run out of drinking water.

What is Water Crisis? What is the situation in India?

Water Crisis- Water crisis refers to the situation where the available potable, safe water in a region is less than its demand. The World Bank refers to water scarcity as a condition when the annual per-capita availability is less than 1000 cubic metres .

Water Crisis Situation in India

What are the reasons for the Water Crisis in India?

1. Rising water demand- According to NITI Aayog, India’s water demand is increasing at a rapid rate. India’s water demand will be twice the available supply by 2030 . Also, the rate of depletion of groundwater in India during 2041-2080 will be thrice the current rate.

2. Groundwater use for agriculture – There is high groundwater usage in agriculture  due to faulty cropping patterns. For ex- Water-intensive paddy cultivation in the states of Punjab and Haryana .

3. Encroachment of Natural Water Bodies- There has been destruction of lakes and small ponds to meet the infrastructure needs of burgeoning populations. For ex- Encroachment of lakes in Bengaluru .

4. Climate Change- Climate Change has led to erratic monsoon and reduced water levels in many rivers. This has induced water crisis in India.

5. Discharge of Pollutants-  There has been contamination of groundwater resources by the discharge of industrial chemicals , sewers and improper mining activities .

6. Lack of proactive management policies- Water management policies in India have failed to keep pace with changing demands of time. For ex- The Easement Act of 1882 granting groundwater ownership rights to the landowner leading to indiscriminate use of water resources.

7. Governance issues- a. Water governance in India has been fragmented . The centre and the states have their respective departments for governing various issues related to water. b. There have been separate departments for surface water and groundwater. Central Water Commission ( for surface water ) and Central Ground Water Board ( for groundwater ). c. Politicization of inter-state disputes by the political parties have hindered the quick resolution of disputes.

8. Detached Citizens- Since water is a free resource, it is not valued by the citizens. Citizens are completely detached from the water issues.

What are the impacts of Water Crisis in India?

1. Economic Impact- a. As per World Bank, India’s GDP could decline by as much as 6% by 2050 due to water scarcity. b. Water scarcity will result in decline of food production . This will hamper India’s food security and have serious impacts on the livelihood of farmers and farm labourers. c. Decline in industrial production as Industrial sectors such as textiles, thermal power plants,etc. may suffer due to water shortage

2. Ecological Impact a. Water scarcity may lead to extinction of flora and fauna . b. Heavy metal contamination (Arsenic, cadmium, nickel etc.) and oil spills in rivers and oceans respectively may threaten the marine biodiversity .

3. Social Impact a.  Deterioration of health of children due to intake of contaminated water . It leads to a reduction in human capital. b. The increased out-of-pocket expenditure on medical expenses adversely impacts the poorest and the most vulnerable sections. c. Increased hardships for women like school dropout,’ water wives ‘ to fetch water in drought prone regions .

4. Federal Relations- a. Amplification of the existing inter-state water disputes like Kaveri, Krishna, Godavari. There will be emergence of new disputes in the future. b. There will be a rise in parochial mindset and regionalism among states and may hinder growth of national unity.

5. International Relations- Water scarcity can lead to conflict among nations to get control over the water bodies. For ex- Impact on India-China relations due to Chinese building of dams over Brahmaputra river .

What are the government initiatives?

What should be the Way Forward?

1. Promotion of Water Conservation- Encouraging rainwater harvesting to capture monsoon run-off. Also, traditional water conservation practices like Kudimaramath practice (Tamil Nadu), Ahar Pynes (Bihar), Bamboo Drip irrigation System(North-East) must be revived .

2. Demand-side Management- States can adopt a participatory approach with the involvement of local communities. For ex- The Swajal model adopted by Uttarakhand focussing on community-based management of water resources. Revival of Johads in Rajasthan desert by Rajendra Singh (Waterman of India).

3. Nature-Based Solutions- Nature-based solutions refer to the solutions that mimic natural processes to provide human , ecological and societal benefits . For ex- Artificial Floodplains to increase water retention , Forest management to reduce sediment loadings.

4. River Basin Management- River basin management must be done through hydrological-basin approach rather than administrative boundaries . Also, steps must be taken to promote interlinking of rivers , while addressing its environmental concerns.

5. Evidence-based policy-making- We must create robust water data systems with real-time monitoring capabilities. For ex- Andhra Pradesh’s online water dashboard for mapping of hydrological resources for better policymaking.

6. Implementing the Mihir Shah Committee Report- The Mihir Shah Committee recommendations must be implemented for restructuring the water governance in India: a. Establishing National Water Commission by merging Central Water Commission(CWC) and Central Groundwater Board(CGWB). It would ensure that the surface and the groundwater are taken as a single entity. b. Focussing on management and maintenance of dams rather than construction of dams. c. Adopting a participatory approach to water management.

Type your email…

Search Articles

Prelims 2024 current affairs.

• Art and Culture
• Indian Economy
• Science and Technology
• Environment  & Ecology
• International Relations
• Polity &  Nation
• Important Bills and Acts
• International Organizations
• Index, Reports and Summits
• Government Schemes and Programs
• Miscellaneous
• Species in news

All India Open Test(Simulator X)

Shopping Cart

No products in the cart.

India’s Water Crisis – How to Solve it?

From Current Affairs Notes for UPSC » Editorials & In-depths » This topic

Water is the most valuable natural resource as it is essential for human survival and life on earth. However, the availability of freshwater for human consumption is highly under stress because of a variety of factors. This crisis of water scarcity is most visible in India as well as in other developing countries.

What is water scarcity?

• Water scarcity is the lack of freshwater resources to satisfy water demand.
• It is manifested by partial or no satisfaction of expressed demand, economic competition for water quantity or quality, disputes between users, irreversible groundwater depletion, and negative effects on the environment.
• It affects every continent and was categorised in 2019 by the World Economic Forum as one of the largest global risks with respect to its potential impact over the next decade.
• One-third of the global population (2 billion people) live under situations of severe water scarcity at least one month of the year.
• Half a billion people in the world affected by severe water scarcity all year round.
• Half of the world’s largest cities have been facing water scarcity.

Express Learning Programme (ELP)

• Optional Notes
• Study Hacks
• Prelims Sureshots (Repeated Topic Compilations)
• Current Affairs (Newsbits, Editorials & In-depths)
• Ancient Indian History
• Medieval Indian History
• Modern Indian History
• Post-Independence Indian History
• World History
• Art & Culture
• Geography (World & Indian)
• Indian Society & Social Justice
• Indian Polity
• International Relations
• Indian Economy
• Environment 
• Agriculture
• Internal Security
• Disasters & its Management
• General Science – Biology
• General Studies (GS) 4 – Ethics
• Syllabus-wise learning
• Political Science
• Anthropology
• Public Administration

SIGN UP NOW

How is the water scarcity measured?

• The absolute minimum water requirement for domestic usage is 50 litres per person per day, though 100-200 litres is often recommended.
• Considering the needs of agriculture, industry and energy sectors, the recommended minimum annual per capita requirement is about 1700 cubic meters .
• If a country like India has only about 1700 cu. meters water per person per year, it will experience only occasional or local water distress .
• If the availability falls below this threshold level, the country will start to experience periodic or regular water stress .
• If the water availability declines below 1000 cu. meters, the country will suffer from chronic water scarcity . Lack of water will then start to severely affect human health and well-being as well as economic development.
• If the annual per capita supply declines below 500 cu. meters, the country will reach the stage of absolute scarcity .

Prelims Sureshots – Most Probable Topics for UPSC Prelims

A Compilation of the Most Probable Topics for UPSC Prelims, including Schemes, Freedom Fighters, Judgments, Acts, National Parks, Government Agencies, Space Missions, and more. Get a guaranteed 120+ marks!

What is the status of water availability in India?

• India receives 4000 bcm (billion cubic metres) rainfall each year. Out of this, 1869 bcm remains after evaporation = The actual availability is only 1137 bcm.
• Even in that 1137 bcm of water, there is a lot of temporal as well as regional variations in the availability.
• For instance, on the one side, there are water surplus states such as Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and on the other side, there are water scarce states such as Maharashtra (Vidarbha, Beed), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and parts of Gujarat.
• Moreover, some states that are known to be water abundant such as Punjab, Haryana have their own issues.

What is the magnitude of the water crisis in India?

• Currently, the annual availability of water is 1123 bcm in India and the demand is around 750 bcm. However, by 2050 the annual demand for water will be 1180 bcm which will exceed the water availability = wide ramifications for the country.
• 70% of India’s water is contaminated.
• 75% of households do not have drinking water on its premises.
• 84% of rural households do not have access to piped water.
• 54% of the country’s groundwater is declining rapidly than it is being replenished.
• India’s water table is declining in most regions. Also, there is a presence of toxic elements like fluoride, arsenic, mercury, even uranium in our groundwater.
• Water levels in India’s major reservoirs have fallen to 21% of the average of the last decade.
• Hundreds of small and seasonal rivers are perishing permanently.
• Almost all the major perennial rivers remain stagnant.
• Cauvery and its tributaries haven’t met the ocean for decades; the upstream dams choke its flows downstream, affecting people in Tamil Nadu.
• Krishna river runs dry in her delta region for most of the year.
• According to NITI Aayog’s water quality index, India ranks 120 th among 122 countries.

What is the recent water crisis in India?

• Maharashtra is facing a water crisis of unprecedented proportions. After years of drought, the river currents have ebbed, water in dams and reservoirs have depleted and over-exploitation of groundwater has raised concerns regarding the long-term availability of water.
• Meanwhile, media reports claim IT firms in Chennai are asking employees to work from home. The reason is that they don’t have enough water to sustain their operations. It hasn’t rained for almost 200 days in the city and it may not get adequate rain to get over the water crisis for the next 3 months.
• In North India, the people of arid Thar Desert of Rajasthan are spending Rs. 2500 for getting 2500 litres of water which they share with their cattle.
• With Punjab facing the threat of desertification and the state struggling to break away from the wheat-paddy cycle, farmers in the state have been adopting a decade-old scheme to utilise underground pipeline system for irrigation.
• In light of this crisis, Central government on its part has created a Jal Shakti Ministry under a full-fledged cabinet minister to resolve the water crisis but a lot more needs to be done.

What are the reasons for this crisis?

Monsoon dependence:.

There is a huge dependence on monsoon rains to replenish most of India’s important water sources such as underground aquifers, lakes, rivers, and reservoirs . But monsoon is vulnerable to factors such as climate change, El-Nino , etc.

Uneven distribution of water and Rainfall pattern :

Certain regions have surplus amounts of water for their need while others face perennial droughts for most of the year. For instance, Drought is a recurrent phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh where no district is entirely free of droughts. Rajasthan is one of the most drought-prone areas of India.

Increasing demand :

Population growth, industrialization, rapid urbanisation, rising needs of irrigation and increase in domestic water usage have accelerated the demand for water. Since urbanization increases in India at a rapid pace = water demand will increase rapidly as city dwellers consume more water than rural people.

Urbanisation & Water scarcity:

• Currently, about 285 million or 33% of India’s total population resides in urban areas. By 2050 this figure will reach 50%.
• Rapid urbanisation is adding to the water scarcity issue in the country.
• Presence of buildings, tar, and cement roads = even if a city like Mumbai gets good rains, the rainwater is not retained in the area as the water is not allowed to percolate underground.
• Therefore, water required for cities is largely drawn from neighbouring villages and far-off rivers and lakes = threatening the availability in those areas.
• Large cities also generate large quantities of urban sewage which pollutes the freshwater sources and ocean waters. However, only about 20% of urban wastewater is currently treated globally. In India, the figure is even lower.

Overexploitation :

• In developing countries like India, groundwater fulfills nearly 80% of irrigation requirement = resulted in a fast depletion of groundwater sources.
• Free power and inefficient utilisation of water by farmers has added to the issue of groundwater depletion.
• The groundwater and sand extraction from most river beds and basins has turned unsustainable.
• Tanks and ponds are encroached upon.
• Dug-wells and borewells are carelessly built to slide deeper and deeper to suck water from greater depths.

Shift to cash-crops:

Water is being diverted from food crops to cash crops that consume an enormous quantity of water.

Inefficient cultivation practices:

• In India, around 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture for its livelihood.
• Since the adoption of Green Revolution in the 1960s, nearly 50% of the food production comes from irrigated land.
• But inefficient cultivation practices have led to the flooding of fertile land which in turn has caused salinization, siltation of reservoirs, etc = causing groundwater reserves of major agricultural states to be depleted at an alarming rate.

Water Pollution :

• Release of industrial and domestic waste, including urban sewage, into rivers, lakes, and estuaries has polluted freshwater sources at an alarming rate in India = those fresh water sources are not fit for drinking or other activities.
• Eutrophication of surface water and coastal zones is expected to increase almost everywhere leads to nitrogen pollution .

What are the impacts of the water crisis?

Economic growth: A Niti Aayog report predicted that water demand will be twice the present supply by 2030 and India could lose up to 6% of its GDP during that time.

Power supply: Water shortages are hurting India’s capacity to generate electricity because 40% of thermal power plants are located in areas where water scarcity is high.

Agricultural crisis: Indian agriculture is heavily dependent on monsoon (not dependable) + Ineffective agricultural practices in irrigated areas = Water stress in agriculture = Poor Cultivation = Farmer suicides .

Drinking water scarcity: Not only farmers are affected by the water crisis, urban dwellers in cities and towns across India are also facing a never seen before drinking water scarcity.

Conflicts over water : In India, there are conflicts between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over sharing of Cauvery waters, between Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh over sharing of Narmada waters, between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana over sharing of Krishna waters, etc.

What are the measures taken by the government?

Across the country, states are taking the lead:.

• In Rajasthan, there is a scheme named ‘Mukhya Mantri Jal Swavlamban Abhiyan’. One of its objectives is to facilitate effective implementation of water conservation and water harvesting related activities in rural areas.
• Maharashtra has launched a project called ‘Jalyukt-Shivar’, which seeks to make 5000 villages free of water scarcity every year.
• accelerating the development of minor irrigation infrastructure,
• strengthening community-based irrigation management and
• adopting a comprehensive programme for restoration of tanks.

Jal Shakti Abhiyan:

• It is a collaborative initiative of various Union Ministries and State Governments, being coordinated by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS).
• Focus Area: is water-stressed districts (256) and blocks (1592).
• Team: Central government officers, headed by joint secretaries and additional secretaries, are assigned to these 256 districts and district administration will also select 2 members to join the team. This team of officers from the central government and district administration will visit and work on water-stressed districts and blocks to ensure water conservation initiatives.
• The campaign is centered on 5 aspects
• Water conservation and rainwater harvesting
• Renovation of traditional and other water bodies/tanks
• Reuse of water and recharging of structures like bore well
• Watershed development
• Intensive afforestation
• Significance: With this initiative, the government seeks to provide drinking water to all households on a priority and in a sustainable way. It is also expected to bring a positive mindset in people for water conservation. The campaign will assist people to work for rainwater harvesting, maintenance, and upkeep of ponds and village tanks and conservation of water.

Jal Shakti Mantralaya

• The government has created a new Ministry named ‘Jal Shakti’after merging Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation with the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation.
• Providing clean drinking water,
• International and inter-states water disputes,
• Namami Gange project aimed at cleaning Ganga and its tributaries, and sub-tributaries.
• The ministry will launch the government’s ambitious plan (‘Nal se Jal’ scheme under jal jivan plan) to provide piped drinking water supply to every household in India by 2024.
• This Move seeks to consolidate the administration and bringing water-related issues such as conservation, development, management, and abatement of pollution under a single ministry.
• National River Conservation Directorate (NRCD) is responsible for implementing the centrally sponsored national river conservation plan for all rivers across the country except river Ganga and its tributaries (as issues regarding Ganga and its tributaries are taken up by National Mission for Clean Ganga).

Jal Jeevan Mission *

Atal Bhujal Yojana *

•  It is a world bank funded central scheme that aims to improve groundwater management at the national level… Read More .

Can a new water ministry tackle the worst water crisis in Indian history?

• Experts are of the opinion that an exclusive ministry can only bring about a cosmetic but not a real change.
• Water is a state subject = Unless states make specific requests the centre cannot intervene.

What are the solutions to the water crisis in India?

Good water management practices :

• India receives adequate annual rainfall through the south-west monsoon. However, most regions of the country are still water deficient mainly because of inefficient water management practices.
• Rainwater harvesting should be encouraged on a large scale, especially, in cities where the surface runoff of rainwater is very high.
• Roof-top rainwater harvesting can also be utilised to recharge groundwater by digging percolation pits around the house and filling it with gravel.
• Indian cities need to learn from Cape Town of South Africa which when faced with the water crisis in 2018 had announced “ Day Zero “. During that day, water-taps in the city turned off = people had to use communal water-taps to conserve water. Restrictions on water use per person were also fixed.
• Since water is a state subject in India state governments should take active measures and create awareness for the minimal use of water.

Interlinking of rivers :

• Interlinking of rivers is a topic that has been discussed and debated for several years as a possible permanent solution to the water crisis in the country.
• The 3 primary advantages mentioned in favour of the scheme are (1) droughts will never occur (2) there will be no more floods in the major rivers and (3) an additional 30,000 MW of hydropower will be generated.

Coordination in aquifer usage: There is an urgent need for coordination among users for aquifers. There should be laws and contracts for sharing of aquifers. Groundwater aquifer mapping has started only recently in India which is a welcome step.

River basin authority: There should be a River Basin Authority for sharing information among states since most of the rivers in India pass through different states.

Coordinated efforts among states for management of groundwater at a localized level.

Community-level management: At the village level, there can be decentralized management of water at the community level.

Charging money for efficient use of water (like electricity). For example- Water ATMs at Marathwada provide water @25 paisa per litre a day.

Good Cultivation practices:

• Changing the cropping pattern, crop diversification and encouraging water use efficiency in agriculture by moving towards food crops from cash crops.
• Innovative farming practices like precision farming , zero budget natural farming , etc. could be employed for efficient water utilisation.

Incentive-based water conservation in rural parts of the water-stressed regions is another solution.

• For example, if a particular level of groundwater level is maintained, higher MSP can be provided to the farmers of that region.
• MSP can also be provided based on crop’s water usage = Crops that consume a high amount of water will get less MSP.

Way forward

India is not a water deficit country, but due to severe neglect and lack of monitoring of water resource development projects, many regions in the country face water stress from time to time. Therefore balancing water demand with available supply is the need of the hour for future economic growth and development as well as for the sustenance of human life.

New National Water Policy (NWP)

In November 2019, the Ministry of Jal Shakti had set up a committee to draft the new National Water Policy (NWP). This was the first time that the government asked a committee of independent experts to draft the policy.

Highlights of NWP

1) demand-side: diversification of public procurement operations.

• Irrigation utilizes 80-90% of India’s water , most of which is used by rice, wheat, and sugarcane.
• Therefore, crop diversification is the single most crucial step in addressing India’s water crisis.
• The policy recommends diversifying public procurement operations to include Nutri-cereals, pulses, and oilseeds.
• This would incentivize farmers to diversify their cropping patterns, resulting in huge savings of water.

2) Reduce-Recycle-Reuse

• Reduce-Recycle-Reuse has been suggested as the basic mantra of integrated urban water supply and wastewater management, with the treatment of sewage and eco-restoration of urban river stretches, as far as possible via decentralised wastewater management.
• All non-potable use like flushing, fire protection, vehicle washing should mandatorily shift to treated wastewater.

3) Supply-side measure: Using technology to use stored water in dams

• Within supply-side options, the NWP points to trillions of litres stored in big dams, that are still not reaching farmers.
• NWP recommends how the irrigated areas could be considerably expanded at very low cost by using pressurised closed conveyance pipelines, in addition to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)  systems and pressurised micro-irrigation.

4) Supply of water through “nature-based solutions”

• The NWP places major importance on the supply of water via “nature-based solutions” like the rejuvenation of catchment areas, to be incentivised through compensation for ecosystem services.
• Specially curated “blue-green infrastructure” like rain gardens and bio-swales, restored rivers with wet meadows, wetlands constructed for bio-remediation, urban parks, permeable pavements, green roofs etc are suggested for urban areas.

5) Sustainable and equitable management of groundwater

• Information on  aquifer boundaries , water storage capacities and flows provided in a user-friendly manner to stakeholders, assigned as custodians of their aquifers, would allow them to create protocols for effective management of groundwater.

6) Rights of Rivers

• The NWP accords river protection and revitalisation prior and primary importance.
• Steps to restore river flows include: Re-vegetation of catchments, regulation of groundwater extraction, river-bed pumping and mining of sand and boulders.
• The NWP outlines a process to draft a  Rights of Rivers Act,  including their right to flow, to meander and to meet the sea.

7) Emphasis on water quality

• The new NWP considers water quality as the most serious un-addressed issue in India today.
• It proposes that every water ministry, at the Centre and states,  include a water quality department.
• The policy advocates adoption of state-of-the-art, low-cost, low-energy, eco-sensitive  technologies for sewage treatment.
• Widespread use of  reverse osmosis has led to huge water wastage  and adverse impact on water quality.
• The policy wants  RO units to be discouraged  if the total dissolved solids count in water is less than 500mg/L.
• It suggests a  task force on emerging water contaminants  to better understand and tackle the threats they are likely to pose.

8) Reforming governance of water

• The policy makes radical proposals for improving the governance of water, which suffers from three kinds of issues: That between irrigation and drinking water, surface and groundwater, as also water and wastewater.
• Government departments, working in silos, have generally dealt with just one side of these binaries.
• Dealing with drinking water and irrigation in silos has meant that aquifers providing assured sources of drinking water dry up because the same aquifers are used for irrigation, which consumes much more water.
• And when  water and wastewater are separated in planning,  the result is a fall in water quality.

9) Creation of National Water Commission

• The NWP also suggests the creation of a unified multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder National Water Commission (NWC), which would become an exemplar for states to follow.
• Governments should build enduring  partnerships with primary stakeholders of water , who must become an integral part of the NWC and its counterparts in the states.

How Gujarat transformed from Water-deficit state to surplus state?

• The Gujarat government created the state-level Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG) to aid in the supply of services and solutions for the deployment of map-based GeoSpatial Information Systems.
• Micro-level check dams.
• Macro-level projects particularly in the Saurashtra, Kutch, and North Gujarat areas.
• Gujarat launched the Kutch branch canal from the Narmada Main canal, which helps provide water to the most distant parts.
• Sujalam Sufalam Yojana: to irrigate the areas of North Gujarat.
• The SAUNI Yojana (Saurashtra Narmada Avtaran Irrigation Yojana), which means literally “reincarnation of the Narmada River in the region,” was thus introduced.
• Administrative and Governance reforms.

If you like this post, please share your feedback in the comments section below so that we will upload more posts like this.

GET MONTHLY COMPILATIONS

Related Posts

Farm Tools for Landless Laborers

OIE Initiatives for Responsible Use of Antibiotics

Agricultural Credit in India – Types, Sources, Problems and Way Forwar...

Excellent essay indeed!

Great explanation.

worth a praise! well done :)

Wish you could mention the references for all the statistics and facts.

Please add features to include this article in PDF.

Where are effects🙄

Haven’t you seen the impacts heading in this article?

Great explanation and essay. This is exactly what I have been searching for.

There was a problem reporting this post.

Block Member?

Please confirm you want to block this member.

You will no longer be able to:

• See blocked member's posts
• Mention this member in posts

Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.

• Classroom Programme
• Interview Guidance
• Online Programme
• Drishti Store
• My Bookmarks
• My Progress
• Change Password
• From The Editor's Desk
• How To Use The New Website
• Help Centre

Achievers Corner

• Topper's Interview
• About Civil Services
• UPSC Prelims Syllabus
• GS Prelims Strategy
• Prelims Analysis
• GS Paper-I (Year Wise)
• GS Paper-I (Subject Wise)
• CSAT Strategy
• Previous Years Papers
• Practice Quiz
• Weekly Revision MCQs
• 60 Steps To Prelims
• Prelims Refresher Programme 2020

Mains & Interview

• Mains GS Syllabus
• Mains GS Strategy
• Mains Answer Writing Practice
• Essay Strategy
• Fodder For Essay
• Model Essays
• Drishti Essay Competition
• Ethics Strategy
• Ethics Case Studies
• Ethics Discussion
• Ethics Previous Years Q&As
• Papers By Years
• Papers By Subject
• Be MAINS Ready
• Awake Mains Examination 2020
• Interview Strategy
• Interview Guidance Programme

Current Affairs

• Daily News & Editorial
• Daily CA MCQs
• Sansad TV Discussions
• Monthly CA Consolidation
• Monthly Editorial Consolidation
• Monthly MCQ Consolidation

Drishti Specials

• To The Point
• Important Institutions
• Learning Through Maps
• PRS Capsule
• Summary Of Reports
• Gist Of Economic Survey

Study Material

• NCERT Books
• NIOS Study Material
• IGNOU Study Material
• Yojana & Kurukshetra
• Chhatisgarh
• Uttar Pradesh
• Madhya Pradesh

Test Series

• UPSC Prelims Test Series
• UPSC Mains Test Series
• UPPCS Prelims Test Series
• UPPCS Mains Test Series
• BPSC Prelims Test Series
• RAS/RTS Prelims Test Series
• Daily Editorial Analysis
• YouTube PDF Downloads
• Strategy By Toppers
• Ethics - Definition & Concepts
• Mastering Mains Answer Writing
• Places in News
• UPSC Mock Interview
• PCS Mock Interview
• Interview Insights
• Prelims 2019
• Product Promos
• Daily Updates

Biodiversity & Environment

Make Your Note

Bengaluru's Water Crisis: A Wake-Up Call for India

• 08 Mar 2024
• 13 min read
• GS Paper - 3
• Environmental Pollution & Degradation
• GS Paper - 1
• Water Resources

This editorial is based on the article “Bengaluru's worst water crisis leaves country's IT capital high and dry” which was published in the Times of India on 07/03/2024. The article talks about the severe water crisis in Bengaluru and assesses the government’s efforts to alleviate the situation.

For Prelims: Water Crisis , Cauvery River , Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) , MGNREGA for water conservation , National Water Mission , Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABHY) , Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) , National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) , One Water Approach.

For Mains: State of the groundwater crisis in India, Steps to Address the Water Crisis in India.

Bengaluru is facing a worsening water crisis , leading to significant shortages in various areas. According to the reports, 223 of the 236 talukas in Karnataka are affected by drought, including Mandya and Mysuru districts, the sources of Bengaluru’s water.

As summer intensifies, about 7,082 villages across Karnataka are at risk of witnessing a drinking water crisis in the coming months.

What are the Reasons Behind Bengaluru's Severe Water Scarcity?

• The city has witnessed insufficient rainfall in the past couple of monsoons. This has significantly impacted the Cauvery River, a primary source of water for the city. Lower river levels mean less water for drinking and agriculture.
• Karnataka received a 38% deficit in north-east Monsoon showers from October to December. The State received a 25% deficit in southwest monsoon rain from June to September.
• As per information from the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Management Centre (KSNDMC), the water levels in Cauvery Basin reservoirs like Harangi, Hemavathi, and Kabini are at 39% of their total capacity as of 2024.
• Bengaluru's explosive growth has resulted in the concretisation of natural landscapes that used to absorb rainwater. This reduces groundwater recharge and increases surface runoff, leading to less water percolation.
• Residents rely on borewells to supplement the water supply. However, with falling rain and excessive extraction, groundwater levels are rapidly declining, causing many borewells to dry up.
• The city's infrastructure, including water supply systems and sewage networks, has not kept pace with its rapid growth. This inadequacy exacerbates the challenges of distributing water efficiently to meet the demands of the expanding population.
• The anticipated completion of Phase-5 of the Cauvery project, designed to provide 110 litres of drinking water daily to 12 lakh people, is expected by May 2024.
• Changing weather patterns, including erratic rainfall and prolonged droughts, attributed to climate change, have reduced the availability of water in Bengaluru's reservoirs and natural water bodies.
• The Indian Meteorological Department attributes the region's poor rainfall to the El Niño phenomenon.
• Pollution from industrial discharge, untreated sewage, and solid waste dumping has contaminated water sources, rendering them unfit for consumption and further reducing the available water supply.
• A study conducted by the Environmental Management & Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) states that about 85% of Bengaluru’s water bodies are polluted by industrial effluents, sewage, and solid waste dumping.
• Inefficient water management practices, including wastage, leakage, and unequal distribution of water resources, contribute to the severity of the water scarcity crisis, with some areas receiving inadequate or irregular water supply.
• Disputes over water sharing between Karnataka and neighbouring states, particularly with regard to rivers like the Cauvery, further complicate efforts to manage and secure water resources for Bengaluru's residents.
• There is an ongoing tussle between the central and state governments concerning the distribution and allocation of funds aimed at addressing the drought situation in Karnataka.

What is the Current State of the Groundwater Crisis in India?

• Despite supporting 17% of the world's population, India possesses only 4% of the world's freshwater resources, making it challenging to meet the water needs of its vast populace.
• A report titled “Composite Water Management Index (CWMI)”, published by NITI Aayog in June 2018, mentioned that India was undergoing the worst water crisis in its history; that nearly 600 million people were facing high to extreme water stress ; and about 200,000 people were dying every year due to inadequate access to safe water.
• India is the largest groundwater user in the world , with an estimated usage of around 251 bcm per year, more than a quarter of the global total.
• With more than 60% of irrigated agriculture and 85% of drinking water supplies dependent on it, and growing industrial/urban usage, groundwater is a vital resource.
• It is projected that the per capita water availability will dip to around 1400 m3 in 2025, and further down to 1250 m3 by 2050.
• Groundwater contamination is the presence of pollutants such as bacteria, phosphates, and heavy metals from human activities including domestic sewage.
• The NITI Aayog report mentioned that India was placed at the rank of 120 amongst 122 countries in the water quality index, with nearly 70% of water being contaminated.
• In parts of India, high levels of arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, and iron are also naturally occurring in groundwater, with concentrations likely to rise as water tables fall.
• The water crisis in India is compounded by a growing demand for clean water, particularly from a fast-growing middle class, and widespread practices of open defecation, leading to health-related concerns.
• 163 Million Indians lack access to safe drinking water.
• 210 Million Indians lack access to improved sanitation.
• 21% of communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water.
• 500 children under the age of five die from diarrhoea each day in India.
• The NITI Aayog report projected the country’s water demand to be twice the available supply by 2030, implying severe scarcity for hundreds of millions of people and an eventual loss in the country’s GDP.
• The rate of depletion of groundwater in India during 2041-2080 will be thrice the current rate with global warming, according to a new report.
• Across climate change scenarios, the researchers found that their estimate of Groundwater Level (GWL) declines from 2041 to 2080 is 3.26 times current depletion rates on average (from 1.62-4.45 times) depending on the Climate model and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario.

What are the Key Government Schemes To Tackle The Groundwater Crisis in India?

• MGNREGA for water conservation
• Jal Kranti Abhiyan
• National Water Mission
• Atal Bhujal Yojana (ABHY)
• Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM)
• National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG)

What Steps Should Be Taken to Address the Water Crisis in India?

• The national interlinking of rivers (ILR) is the idea that rivers should be inter-connected, so that water from the surplus rivers and regions could be transferred to deficient regions and rivers to address the issue of water scarcity.
• Implementing water conservation measures at individual, community, and national levels is crucial.
• This includes promoting rainwater harvesting, efficient irrigation techniques, and minimising water wastage in domestic, industrial, and agricultural sectors.
• Allocate adequate financial resources for water infrastructure development, maintenance, and rehabilitation.
• Explore innovative financing mechanisms such as public-private partnerships, water tariffs, and user fees to mobilise funding for water projects.
• Encourage farmers to adopt water-efficient farming practices such as drip irrigation, precision agriculture, crop rotation, and agroforestry.
• Providing incentives and subsidies for implementing water-saving technologies can facilitate this transition.
• As per the MS Swaminathan committee report on ‘More Crop and Income Per Drop of Water’ (2006) , drip and sprinkler irrigation can save around 50% of water in crop cultivation and increase the yield of crops by 40-60%.
• Combat water pollution by enforcing strict regulations on industrial discharge, sewage treatment, and agricultural runoff.
• Implementing wastewater treatment plants and adopting eco-friendly practices can help reduce pollution levels in rivers, lakes, and groundwater sources.
• Strengthen water governance frameworks by enacting and enforcing water-related legislation, policies, and regulatory mechanisms.
• Establishing local, regional, and national water management authorities can facilitate coordinated decision-making and implementation of water management strategies.
• Introducing minimum support policies for less water-intensive crops can reduce the pressure on agricultural water use.
• Strengthening community participation and rights in groundwater governance can improve groundwater management.
• World Bank projects for groundwater governance in peninsular India were successful on several fronts by implementing the Participatory Groundwater Management approach (PGM).
• One Water Approach , also referred to as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), is the recognition that all water has value, regardless of its source.
• It includes managing that source in an integrated, inclusive and sustainable manner by including the community, business leaders, industries, farmers, conservationists, policymakers, academics and others for ecological and economic benefits.

By fostering inclusive participation from all stakeholders, and implementing sound policies that prioritise long-term sustainability over short-term gains, India can pave the way towards a future where every Indian has access to safe and reliable groundwater.

UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Questions (PYQs)

Q. What are the benefits of implementing the ‘Integrated Watershed Development Programme’? (2014)

• Prevention of soil runoff
• Linking the country’s perennial rivers with seasonal rivers
• Rainwater harvesting and recharge of groundwater table
• Regeneration of natural vegetation

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

(a) 1 and 2 only  (b) 2, 3 and 4 only  (c) 1, 3 and 4 only (d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Q. What is water stress? How and why does it differ regionally in India? (2019)

189 'potential violations' of Safe Drinking Water Act cited in review of Riviera Beach Utility District

It's a water crisis that led to a crisis of confidence.

Since WPTV broke the news that Riviera Beach's Utility District neglected to tell water users of contamination, people feared drinking water jeopardized their health.

"I would be dead asleep," said Riviera Beach resident David Simpson, who believes the water caused illness. "And all of a sudden I feel like I went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson."

"This is the kind of thing you wonder if the governor needs to step in," added Scott Lewis.

Riviera Beach

This city is under investigation for breaking water quality laws 189 times

From a letter we obtained through a public record request, the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) cites Riviera Beach utilities with possible violations.

The Health Department writes the city "…may have failed to report the results of test measurements" 151 times.

Other potential violations:

• Failing to report positive tests for fecal matter
• Failing to implement corrective actions
• Failing to issue public notices

I asked veteran attorney Richard Schuler what he thought of the letter. "Shocked and appalled, frankly," said Schuler, who once lived in Riviera Beach and is not involved in litigation in this case.

"To see as many violations as they have in such a period of time is incredible to me," Schuler said. "The city and obviously the residents of the city are going to be responsible to pay for it."

A statement from the Utilities District did not address the potential of fines. It read, "We have met with the FDOH to discuss the matter and agree on a course of action to investigate and validate the potential violations."

I took concerns over the report to Riviera Beach City Council President Douglas Lawson.

WPTV Investigates

WPTV EXCLUSIVE: Riviera Beach city manager apologizes for water quality issues

"That letter is just a warning letter, to let us know there are claims that are going out," said Lawson, who says the city may challenge some of what the Florida Department of Health calls "potential violations."

"Once we find out what we're going to do and what we negotiate with the Health Department, we're going to make sure we address the concerns," said Lawson, who added the city's drinking water is safe and that the potential violations are from 2023.

Lawson says if there are any fines, the city will try to negotiate to lower them.

We're staying on top of all the developments in the water crisis, and we'll bring them to you when they come available.

Sign up for the South Florida Sports Headlines Newsletter and receive up to date information.

Now signed up to receive the south florida sports headlines newsletter..

At WPTV, It Starts with Listening

• Entertainment
• Science and Tech
• Education Today

Drinking water crisis hits Telangana due to lack of power to pump Mission Bhagiratha water

Due to power disruption people in over 5,000 habitations across Telangana faced drinking water problems after heavy rain lashed the State earlier this week

Hyderabad: The disruption of power supply due to heavy rain and strong wind has halted the pumping of drinking water in several habitations across six districts of the State.

The heavy rains in the last few days have severely disrupted drinking water supply networks, particularly in the districts of Khammam, Bhadradri-Kothagudem, Mahabubabad, Suryapet, Nizamabad, and Nagarkurnool. According to officials, due to power disruption people in over 5,000 habitations faced drinking water problems after heavy rain lashed the State on August 31. For the first three days people in these districts did not have access to drinking water through pipelines and they had to depend on other sources, the officials added.

After restoration of power, drinking water supply has started in over 4000 habitations and efforts are being made by the power officials to restore power in other habitations as well.The power officials informed that drinking water supply was halted as in several places as substations submerged due floods. They claimed that power supply restoration works were going on a war footing and that in the next 24-hours restoration works would be completed in the majority of the affected areas.

Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TGSPDCL) Chairman and Managing Director Musharraf Ali Faruqui informed that the company suffered heavy losses in Suryapet district due to heavy rains. As many as 2127 electric poles, including 15 33 kv poles, 1074 11 kv poles, 1038 LT poles and 319 transformers were damaged due to rain and strong wind, he said.

According to Telangana State Northern Power Distribution Company Limited(TGNPDCL) officials, except for some places in Khammam, Bhadradri-Kothagudem and Mahabubabad districts, the power had been restored in all the other districts under its jurisdiction. They ensured that in the next 24-hours power would be restored in all the areas in these three districts.

• Follow Us :
• drinking water crisis
• Mission Bhagiratha
• Musharraf Ali Faruqui

Related News

TGSPDCL CMD urges pandal organisers to follow safety precautions

SPDCL CMD asks consumers to lodge complaint against power staff demanding bribes

TGSPDCL asks cable, internet operators to remove unnecessary cables from electric poles

SPDCL to replace metal clamps with FRP to avoid power outages caused by reptiles

Latest news, corporator’s husband arrested in karimnagar, consider flood loss uniformly between two telugu states, cm appeals to shivraj singh chouhan, school education department release dsc 2024 final key, imd, nrsc officials visit mulugu forest to analyse reasons behind uprooting of trees, floods leave road connectivity affected in khammam, repairs yet to begin, goc tasa flags off cycle expedition at secunderabad, tgejac puts forward 39 demands before government, centre’s contribution to telangana’s revenue receipts declines over the years.

Enhancing Drinking Water Safety: Real-Time Prediction of Trihalomethanes in a Water Distribution System Using Machine Learning and Multisensory Technology

21 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2024

Antonio Jesús Aragón Barroso

affiliation not provided to SSRN

David Ribes

Francisco osorio.

University of Granada

Prolonged exposure to high concentrations of trihalomethanes (THMs) may generate human health risks due to their carcinogenic and mutagenic properties. Therefore, monitoring THMs in drinking water distribution systems (WDS) is crucial. This study focused on the statistical modelling of THMs formation through multiple linear regression (MLR) method to develop simple predictive models which acted as preventive tools capable of alerting about potential increases of THMs within the water network. To do this, a dataset with 1192 observations of water quality measurements in the study area over five years was built. The independent variables chosen to explain the formation of THMs were free residual chlorine (FRC), total organic carbon (TOC), conductivity, pH and turbidity. Then, after performing an exploratory analysis of the dataset using Pearson’s correlation matrix and an ANOVA test, multiple regression models were programmed. Thus, a total of two predictive models were built, based on data filtering by conductivity levels, with a coefficient of determination (R) of 0.64 and 0.47. The algorithms of the predictive models were integrated into the control center of the water company in the study area. On the other hand, a multisensory device was installed in a strategically located drinking water tank to measure the values of the independent variables of the models. These measurements were transmitted online to the control center to continually update the predictive models and provide real-time THMs forecasts. Finally, model validation was conducted by comparing the real-time predictions of the models with actual THMs from laboratory analysis, achieving an average accuracy of 90%.

Keywords: THMs, model, prediction, monitoring, multisensory device

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Antonio Jesús Aragón Barroso (Contact Author)

Affiliation not provided to ssrn ( email ).

No Address Available

University of Granada ( email )

C/Rector López Argueta S/N Granada, 18071 Spain

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics.

MSF is responding to the emergency in Gaza

• Work With Us
• Ways to give Donate now Give Monthly More Ways to Give

Search results

COMMON QUESTIONS

• What is MSF doing in Gaza?
• What is MSF’s mission?
• How does MSF use donations?
• How can I help?

90% of our funding comes from individual donors. Learn how you can support MSF’s lifesaving care with a gift.

• What We Do Discover how we bring lifesaving care to those who need it most
• Where We Work Explore our work in more than 70 countries
• Medical Issues Learn about the diseases and medical conditions we treat
• Our Work in Focus Understand the complex crises we're responding to
• Who We Are A global movement providing lifesaving care
• Finances, Reporting & Accountability Get our annual financial statements and nonprofit tax filings
• Our History Understand our founding principles and the history of our work
• The US Office Find out more about our US headquarters
• News & Stories Get the latest from our projects around the world
• Alert Magazine Read features from our quarterly magazine
• Events Calendar Connect with the MSF movement
• Latest Campaigns Become a part of MSF’s most important lifesaving work today
• Ways to Get Involved Discover the many ways you can support our lifesaving work
• Ways to Give Individuals like you provide 90% of our funding
• Fundraise We make it easy to raise money to support the MSF movement
• Friends of MSF Chapters Learn how to get involved with our university student groups
• Attend an Event Connect with the MSF movement
• Give Monthly
• More Ways to Give
• News & Stories

Developing story

This article is part of a developing story.

Sudan: 500 days of war have triggered a massive humanitarian crisis

More international aid is urgently required to meet the soaring medical needs, from catastrophic child malnutrition to widespread disease outbreaks.

Dr. Faiza Hamed Hangata (center), who is from El Geneina in West Darfur, Sudan, tries to resuscitate a child with tracheal bronchitis and septic shock. Chad 2024 © Finbarr O’Reilly/VII Photo

• Access to medicines
• Malnutrition

PORT SUDAN/DARFUR, SUDAN, August 27, 2024 — Today marks 500 days of a dire humanitarian crisis brought on by the war in Sudan . This is a shameful moment for international humanitarian organizations and donors, who for over 16 months have failed to provide an adequate response to the country’s escalating medical needs, from catastrophic child malnutrition to widespread disease outbreaks.

Heavy restrictions on the movement of supplies and personnel imposed by both warring parties have drastically limited the capacity of organizations delivering aid, including Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). 

Fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) started in the capital, Khartoum , on April 15, 2023 and has been raging across the country since then. The conflict has triggered an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Sudan, leaving tens of thousands of people killed or injured. Between April 2023 and June 2024, MSF treated 11,985 war-wounded patients at supported hospitals. The violence has created the world’s largest displacement crisis: Over 10 million people —1 in 5 people in Sudan—have been forced to flee their homes, according to the UN, and many have been displaced multiple times.

Malnutrition on the rise

As political solutions to the crisis are not forthcoming, malnutrition is rising amid increasing food prices and a lack of humanitarian supplies. A catastrophic malnutrition crisis is taking place in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp , and MSF’s inpatient therapeutic feeding centers in other parts of Darfur including El Geneina, Nyala, and Rokero are full of patients. The same applies to refugee camps where we operate in eastern Chad . Between the onset of the war and June 2024, we treated 34,751 acutely malnourished children in Sudan.

Today children are dying of malnutrition across Sudan. The help they most urgently need is barely coming and, when it does, it is often blocked. Tuna Turkmen, MSF emergency coordinator

"Today children are dying of malnutrition across Sudan,” said Tuna Turkmen, MSF emergency coordinator in Darfur. “The help they most urgently need is barely coming and, when it does, it is often blocked. In July, for instance, trucks with MSF supplies in two different locations in Darfur were blocked from reaching their destination. Two trucks were held by RSF, and one was seized by unknown armed men.” 

Supply blockages and rainy season compound needs

The situation is also challenging in eastern and central Sudan. 

“In south Khartoum, MSF has been blocked from bringing medical supplies and international staff to hospitals for many months,” said Claire San Filippo, also an MSF emergency coordinator in Sudan. “It is becoming increasingly difficult to provide the medical care our patients need, including maternity and emergency care.” 

On top of man-made impediments imposed or tolerated by the warring parties—including lawlessness, insecurity, bureaucratic obstacles, and delayed or denied permissions to reach affected areas, which have significantly slowed down the humanitarian response—now the natural environment is also hampering the movement of humanitarian personnel and supplies.  

Since the collapse of the Mornei bridge in West Darfur on August 8, millions of people have been unable to access assistance as it was the only route connecting Central and South Darfur with Chad, where supplies are sent from.

The rainy season, an annual occurrence that exacerbates needs and complicates movements, is currently at its peak. Heavy rains have flooded crossing points and washed away critical roads and bridges. Since the collapse of the Mornei bridge in West Darfur on August 8, millions of people have been unable to access assistance as it was the only route connecting Central and South Darfur with Chad, where supplies are sent from.

We already see an uptick in malaria cases and waterborne diseases, and cholera outbreaks have been declared in at least three states. For children, the threat of vaccine -preventable diseases, such as measles , is looming since the war has put immunization campaigns on hold.  

Attacks on health care leave few functioning facilities

Meanwhile, the conflict has put nearly 80 percent of health facilities in some states out of service, according to the World Health Organization, straining an already struggling health system. In El Fasher alone, MSF-supported facilities were attacked 12 times and only one public hospital remains partially functional with the ability to perform surgery since fighting escalated in the city in May.  

More recently, at around 4:40 a.m. on August 22, shelling struck and damaged a house accommodating part of the MSF team working in El Fasher and Zamzam. Fortunately, no one in the house was injured. This constitutes the 84th violent incident against MSF staff, vehicles, and premises in Sudan since the start of this conflict, which has been characterized by a glaring disregard for the protection of civilians, health personnel, and facilities.

The situation is not much better in neighboring countries, where about 2 million have sought refuge, often separated from their loved ones.  

“My husband has been missing for over a year and I don't know where he is,” said Um Adel, a woman in Metché camp in eastern Chad. “[My son] Khalid was fine until the food started to diminish. After a day or two of not eating well, he developed a high fever. I don't feel comfortable here and the situation is not good. I want to go back to Sudan.”

Urgent action is needed in Sudan

Warring parties—and member states with influence over them—must ensure the protection of civilians, health personnel, and medical facilities. Responsible authorities on both sides of the conflict must simplify processes of granting permissions for humanitarian movement and personnel through all available routes across borders, states, and front lines, and provide prompt responses. And the United Nations, relevant agencies, and anyone who has the power to help must employ all measures to ensure that available access routes are utilized to their fullest extent.

In many places we work, we are the only international organization operating, but we cannot tackle this huge crisis alone. We are also struggling to get supplies and staff to our projects. Esperanza Santos, an MSF emergency coordinator in Sudan

“MSF tries to fill some of the gaps,” said Esperanza Santos, an MSF emergency coordinator in Sudan. “In many places we work, we are the only international organization operating, but we cannot tackle this huge crisis alone. We are also struggling to get supplies and staff to our projects. In tandem with access, securing sustained funding to UN agencies as well as local organizations and others carrying the brunt of this response, is also essential. A meaningful response, with aid reaching people who need it most, must start now. There is no more time to waste.”

“He survived the worst of the war and died from drinking dirty water”

MSF is one of the few international organizations working on both sides of the conflict in Sudan , currently running and supporting medical projects including in over 20 primary health care clinics and hospitals across eight of Sudan’s 18 states. MSF employs 926 Sudanese staff and 118 international staff, and provides incentives to 1,092 Ministry of Health staff who are often working without pay. 

Sudan crisis response

More news and stories.

Story Sep 06, 2024

Ukraine: Last civilian hospital in Pokrovsk forced to evacuate all sta...

News Sep 05, 2024

Haiti: MSF denounces obstruction of ambulance

Story Sep 05, 2024

Palestinians struggle to access medical services in the West Bank as I...

© Médecins Sans Frontières 2024 Federal tax ID#: 13-3433452

Unrestricted donations enable MSF to carry out our programs around the world. While we try to honor requests to earmark, should we receive more gifts than we can use for a program, we will reallocate them where the needs are greatest.

• Donor Services
• Donor Portal
• Finances & Accountability
• Ways to Give
• Major Giving
• Partner Program
• Planned Giving
• Foundation Support
• Corporate Support

For Supporters

• Latest Campaigns
• Attend an Event
• Join a Chapter
• Offices Around the World

For Recruits

• Work in the US office
• Find a Role in the Field
• Field Work Application Guide
• Internships

General Interest

• Privacy Policy
• Scam Warning

We speak out. Get updates.

How we use funds.

Your gift helps us provide medical humanitarian aid for hundreds of thousands of people each year.

Fundraising

Management & General Admin