Brace yourself for higher water bills—and soon.
Within a decade, millions of Americans could face monthly water bills so high that they’ll become unaffordable. Water rates have already been rising three times faster than inflation. However, hotter and drier conditions could exacerbate current strains on aging infrastructure, leaving more than one-third of U.S. households grappling with unaffordable bills, according to a study led by Stanford University researchers that was published earlier this month.
“If you’re already struggling to pay your water bill, and now it’s going to be double what it was before because of climate change, you’re going to really have a problem making ends meet,” Sarah Fletcher, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, said in a video about the results, which were published in Nature Sustainability.
Unless policymakers at both the federal and state levels intervene, Americans will be forced to foot the bill for basic water access that could see them making some difficult trade-offs, Fletcher said. “Under today’s financing and regulatory models, climate adaptation and water affordability are on a collision course,” she said in a statement.
SANTA CRUZ AS A TEST CASE
The researchers homed in on Santa Cruz, California, to model how the effects of climate change could worsen a water affordability crisis. The researchers chose the coastal city because its water is locally sourced and the city has already been forced to cut back on residential water use because of droughts or water shortages, Jennifer Skerker, the study’s lead author, said in the video.
“Currently, the main way that utilities can pay for these additional investments is through increasing water bills,” said Skerker, a PhD student in civil and environmental engineering at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Stanford School of Engineering. But passing along the costs for additional infrastructure and reliability measures could push a substantial share of households into crisis, she said in a statement.
By modeling out the water affordability impacts of climate change, the researchers found that the challenges for American households could be worse than previously estimated in other places like Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, along with other cities in the West.
Hotter and drier weather could increase water demands while decreasing water supplies, Skerker told USA Today. Such dynamics could force utilities to invest more money into alternative supply infrastructure that’s expensive, she told the outlet.
“MUST ACT NOW”
As for solutions, Skerker told USA Today there are “multiple” options that federal and state policymakers should consider.
While grant and loan programs could help utilities to pay for the cost of expensive new infrastructure to maintain reliability, Skerker said assistance programs could also help low-income households.
But one thing is clear: The current dynamic of utilities paying for infrastructure costs by passing along increased water rates to households isn’t sustainable, the researchers cautioned.
“We have to act now,” Fletcher said.
