Papers by Carolina Balazs
PLOS ONE, 2021
Water affordability is central to water access but remains a challenge to measure. California ens... more Water affordability is central to water access but remains a challenge to measure. California enshrined the human right to safe and affordable water in 2012 but the question remains: how should water affordability be measured across the state? This paper contributes to this question in three steps. First, we identify key dimensions of water affordability measures (including scale, volume of water needed to meet ‘basic’ needs, and affordability criteria) and a cross-cutting theme (social equity). Second, using these dimensions, we develop three affordability ratios measured at the water system scale for households with median, poverty level, and deep poverty (i.e., half the poverty level) incomes and estimate the corresponding percentage of households at these income levels. Using multiple measures conveys a fuller picture of affordability given the known limitations of specific affordability measures. Third, we analyze our results disaggregated by a key characteristic of water syste...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Environmental Justice, 2013
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
American Journal of Public Health, 2014
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Water Policy, 2014
California recently implemented a statewide effort to learn how best to outreach to and involve ‘... more California recently implemented a statewide effort to learn how best to outreach to and involve ‘disadvantaged communities’ in integrated regional water management (IRWM) planning. Using the case of the Kings Basin Water Authority's Disadvantaged Community Pilot Project Study, we argue that social learning is a key mechanism through which the procedural and distributive justice goals of environmental justice are integrated into water resources planning. Using interviews, focus groups and survey results, we find that social learning has short- and medium-term effects of increasing access to information, broadening stakeholder participation and developing initial foundations for structural changes to water governance. However, long-term change in the structure of IRWM institutions is, at best, in its early phases. Social learning provides a basis for changing water governance and management outcomes in ways that promote representation of traditionally marginalized groups and the w...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
American Journal of Public Health
Objectives. To evaluate universal access to clean drinking water by characterizing relationships ... more Objectives. To evaluate universal access to clean drinking water by characterizing relationships between community sociodemographics and water contaminants in California domestic well areas (DWAs) and community water systems (CWSs). Methods. We integrated domestic well locations, CWS service boundaries, residential parcels, building footprints, and 2013–2017 American Community Survey data to estimate sociodemographic characteristics for DWAs and CWSs statewide. We derived mean drinking and groundwater contaminant concentrations of arsenic, nitrate, and hexavalent chromium (Cr[VI]) between 2011 and 2019 and used multivariate models to estimate relationships between sociodemographic variables and contaminant concentrations. Results. We estimated that more than 1.3 million Californians (3.4%) use domestic wells and more than 370 000 Californians rely on drinking water with average contaminant concentrations at or above regulatory standards for 1 or more of the contaminants considered. ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
WIREs Water
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Background: Few studies of environmental justice examine inequities in drinking water contaminati... more Background: Few studies of environmental justice examine inequities in drinking water contamination. Those studies that have done so usually analyze either disparities in exposure/harm or inequitable implementation of environmental policies. The US EPA’s 2001 Revised Arsenic Rule, which tightened the drinking water standard for arsenic from 50 μg/L to 10 μg/L, offers an opportunity to analyze both aspects of environmental justice. Methods: We hypothesized that Community Water Systems (CWSs) serving a higher proportion of minority residents or residents of lower socioeconomic status (SES) have higher drinking water arsenic levels and higher odds of non-compliance with the revised standard. Using water quality sampling data for arsenic and maximum contaminant level (MCL) violation data for 464 CWSs actively operating from 2005–2007 in California’s San Joaquin Valley we ran bivariate tests and linear regression models. Results: Higher home ownership rate was associated with lower arsen...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Rheem Creek is a three mile long urban stream, located in California’s western Contra Costa Count... more Rheem Creek is a three mile long urban stream, located in California’s western Contra Costa County. Since 1960, Rheem Creek has been impacted by humans in a number of ways, including channelization for flood control purposes and residential development. Due to the deteriorated state of Rheem Creek, local community groups have partnered with stream restoration organizations to clean-up and rehabilitate the Creek. Little field data exists on the conditions of the Creek itself, or on the geomorphic, hydrologic, water quality and ecological conditions at specific sites. To overcome this barrier, and serve as a resource for local restoration efforts, this study aimed to: 1) Offer an additional qualitative overview of the human impacts on Rheem Creek and 2) Quantify the hydrologic and channel form conditions at the Contra Costa College immediately downstream from a proposed restoration project. This study reveals that variable conditions exist along Rheem Creek, including the presence of ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Author(s): Balazs, Carolina Laurie | Advisor(s): Ray, Isha; Morello-Frosch, Rachel | Abstract: Ca... more Author(s): Balazs, Carolina Laurie | Advisor(s): Ray, Isha; Morello-Frosch, Rachel | Abstract: California's San Joaquin Valley is one of the world's richest agricultural regions yet it is also home to some of the greatest environmental problems, including drinking water contamination. After decades of intensive agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV), the region's aquifers and rivers are some of the most contaminated in the nation. This creates a notoriously difficult environmental problem to regulate, and related public health and environmental justice issues. Ninety-five percent of the SJV population relies on this contaminated groundwater for drinking thus creating an exposure risk. Contaminant exposures are further compounded by the fact that with high costs of treatment, few water systems are able to afford mitigation, especially under-resourced communities. Yet most of our understanding of water in the San Joaquin Valley concerns agricultural water use, or envi...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
With this article, we develop the Drinking Water Disparities Framework to explain environmental i... more With this article, we develop the Drinking Water Disparities Framework to explain environmental injustice in the context of drinking water in the United States. The framework builds on the social epidemiology and environmental justice literatures, and is populated with 5 years of field data (2005‐2010) from California’s San Joaquin Valley. We trace the mechanisms through which natural, built, and sociopolitical factors work through state, county, community, and household actors to constrain access to safe water and to financial resources for communities. These constraints and regulatory failures produce social disparities in exposure to drinking water contaminants. Water system and household coping capacities lead, at best, to partial protection against exposure. This composite burden explains the origins and persistence of social disparities in exposure to drinking water contaminants. (Am J Public Health. 2014;104: 603‐611. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2013.301664) “Isn’t the issue of contamin...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Access to clean drinking water for low-income and minority communities in the US has only recentl... more Access to clean drinking water for low-income and minority communities in the US has only recently gained importance as a research area. In California's Central Valley, our previous research indicated that small community water systems serving higher fractions of people of color and renters had higher concentrations of nitrates. These findings suggest a disproportionate exposure to a drinking water contaminant linked with reproductive toxicity and methemoglobinemia. But why do these inequalities persist in spite of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)? This study assesses the implementation rather than the intent of the SDWA. We examine whether procedural inequalities exist alongside distributional oneswhereby the regulatory structure that is meant to protect public health instead exacerbates disproportionate exposures. Using data on drinking water quality monitoring, historical rates of violations of maximum contaminant levels (MCL) and interviews with regulators, our study answe...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
People living in the arid areas experience highly variable rainfall, droughts and floods often ha... more People living in the arid areas experience highly variable rainfall, droughts and floods often have insecure livelihoods. Small multi-purpose reservoirs supply water for domestic use, livestock watering, small scale irrigation, fisheries, and other beneficial uses. Although reservoir ensembles store a significant quantity of water and have a significant effect on downstream flows, they have rarely been considered as systems, with synergies and tradeoffs resulting from the number and density of their structures. The Small Reservoirs Project (SRP) will develop tools to assist people working at two scales. At the basin/ensemble scale, people will be helped to maintain water related ecosystem services, the long-term sustainability of local water supplies, and adequate downstream flows as they make use of small reservoirs. At the community/household scale, they will be helped to improve food security and increase sustainable livelihoods. The SRP is developing a suite of innovative method...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
PLOS ONE, 2021
Water affordability is central to water access but remains a challenge to measure. California ens... more Water affordability is central to water access but remains a challenge to measure. California enshrined the human right to safe and affordable water in 2012 but the question remains: how should water affordability be measured across the state? This paper contributes to this question in three steps. First, we identify key dimensions of water affordability measures (including scale, volume of water needed to meet 'basic' needs, and affordability criteria) and a cross-cutting theme (social equity). Second, using these dimensions, we develop three affordability ratios measured at the water system scale for households with median, poverty level, and deep poverty (i.e., half the poverty level) incomes and estimate the corresponding percentage of households at these income levels. Using multiple measures conveys a fuller picture of affordability given the known limitations of specific affordability measures. Third, we analyze our results disaggregated by a key characteristic of wat...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has become a globally recognized approach to water g... more Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has become a globally recognized approach to water governance. However, the definition of IWRM remains abstract, and implementation challenges remain. This chapter analyzes IWRM from the perspective of adaptive governance, which conceptualizes IWRM as an institutional arrangement that seeks to solve collective-action problems associated with water resources and adapt over time in response to social and environmental change. Adaptive governance synthesizes several strands of literature to identify the core social processes of water governance: cooperation, learning, and resource distribution. This chapter reviews the existing research on these ideas and presents frontier research questions that require continued investigation to understand how IWRM contributes to the sustainability and resilience of water governance. It argues that an adaptive governance lens allows movement beyond the contentious normative debate surrounding the appropria...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Environmental Health Perspectives, Jun 3, 2011
Background: Research on drinking water in the United States has rarely examined disproportionate ... more Background: Research on drinking water in the United States has rarely examined disproportionate exposures to contaminants faced by low-income and minority communities. This study analyzes the relationship between nitrate concentrations in community water systems (CWSs) and the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics of customers.Objectives: We hypothesized that CWSs in California’s San Joaquin Valley that serve a higher proportion of minority or residents of lower socioeconomic status have higher nitrate levels and that these disparities are greater among smaller drinking water systems.Methods: We used water quality monitoring data sets (1999–2001) to estimate nitrate levels in CWSs, and source location and census block group data to estimate customer demographics. Our linear regression model included 327 CWSs and reported robust standard errors clustered at the CWS level. Our adjusted model controlled for demographics and water system characteristics and stratified by CWS size.Results: Percent Latino was associated with a 0.04-mg nitrate-ion (NO3)/L increase in a CWS’s estimated NO3 concentration [95% confidence interval (CI), –0.08 to 0.16], and rate of home ownership was associated with a 0.16-mg NO3/L decrease (95% CI, –0.32 to 0.002). Among smaller systems, the percentage of Latinos and of homeownership was associated with an estimated increase of 0.44 mg NO3/L (95% CI, 0.03–0.84) and a decrease of 0.15 mg NO3/L (95% CI, –0.64 to 0.33), respectively.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that in smaller water systems, CWSs serving larger percentages of Latinos and renters receive drinking water with higher nitrate levels. This suggests an environmental inequity in drinking water quality.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Urban Geography, 2015
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Preliminary policy reports have found that California counties with higher rates of poverty and g... more Preliminary policy reports have found that California counties with higher rates of poverty and greater percentages of people of color have a disproportionate rate (i.e. almost twenty-fold higher) of violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). Such reports suggest a case of environmental injustice in these communities. There is little rigorous research on the intersection of drinking water quality, environmental justice (EJ) and environmental health at the community scale in California. We examine the relationship between race, class, and exposure to drinking water contaminants and SDWA violations in community water systems (CWS) in the entire San Joaquin Valley (SJV). Combining datasets on water quality monitoring results, drinking water violations, CWS characteristics and customer demographics, we test two hypotheses: 1) CWS that serve a higher proportion of people of color and/or low-income residents (vs. those that serve higher proportions of whites or high income customer...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Carolina Balazs