Environmental Justice: Investigating the Past, Present, and Future of Lead in Drinking Water

Abstract

This thesis aims to look at the impact of lead usage in water systems across the US to examine the inequities experienced by disadvantaged communities using an environmental justice lens. Lead contamination of water has been a large source of environmental distress to communities across the world. In recent years, the negative impacts of lead in drinking water have come to the forefront due to events such as the Flint Water Crisis, resulting in the uncovering of widespread lead pipe usage in cities across the United States. Risk of water lead contamination, however, does not affect everyone in the same way, and in fact has been seen to disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities. The effects of lead water contamination have long been studied, but little work focuses specifically on the environmental justice roots of today’s lead pipe usage. This study conducts a three-pronged analysis in order to investigate the past, present, and future of the situation: (1) a data analysis of lead service line mappings with historical redlining data, (2) research into the correlation between current household demographics and lead pipe presence, and (3) a meta-analysis to study remediation efforts across cities and discern patterns between neighborhoods of priority. The results vary between each city analyzed, but the findings largely show that the HOLC grade of the neighborhood a house is found in has an impact on the likelihood of having lead pipes. Similarly, results show that demographic traits such as race, income, age, employment status, educational attainment, citizenship, and language spoken in the household have a significant impact on the likelihood of lead pipe presence, though the way in which each impacts the likelihood varies between the cities analyzed. Lastly, this study highlights the common aim of remediation efforts to focus on those with the greatest lead exposure, however, the efficacy of this endeavor is often not fully confirmed. Overall, these results provide greater knowledge of at-risk populations for lead exposure from an infrastructure perspective, which can aid in developing appropriate responses to current and future water crises.