DR. NOBLE A-W MASERU
Do you know who your water provider is?
Do you know where your water comes from?
Do you know how decisions are made about your drinking water?
These are some of the questions the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory is hoping will engage Pittsburghers and get them thinking about water justice and what it means to underserved communities.
Water justice is the fair distribution and protection of clean, safe water among all people, regardless of their social, economic, or cultural background, including future generations.
The work that people and organizations do to promote water justice is called structural intervention. Structural interventions are the methods we use to change social, economic, and political systems for the better. These changes improve people’s health and reduce health inequities caused by social determinants of health (SDoH).
Structural interventions serve as the “boots on the ground” for dismantling inequitable systems that have come about because of systemic racism. The systems result in unfair policies, such as redlining, low life expectancy, and, in the case of water justice, little or no Black representation in a water system’s operation and unequal pay.
In our region, the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory (PWC) is laying the groundwork for altering the social context where water inequity transpires and persists.
Founded in 2018, the PWC joins two groups: Women for a Healthy Environment (WHE) and Pitt educators from Geology and Environmental Science, Public and International Affairs, Health Sciences, and Sociology.
In 2021, after a lengthy interruption by the pandemic, the PWC received a grant from Pitt to advance regional water equity.
Dr. Noble A-W Maseru, Professor of Public Health Practice, Director, Social Justice, Racial Equity and Faculty Engagement, Health Sciences at Pitt is a PWC member. In the early days of his career, Dr. Maseru worked in Tanzania where the government valued the importance of rural development and farming for nation building and self-reliance.
“The national mantra was uhuru ni kazi ‘freedom is work’ and uhai ni maji ‘water is life,’ he explains. “But really, that’s true everywhere, isn’t it? When we think about the lead problems in Flint, Michigan or consider storm management and climate change in New Orleans, ‘water is life,’ and ‘freedom is work’ must become our mantra, too.”
Allegheny County has 36 separate water systems. All but one is publicly owned. Many are under-resourced and understaffed and all could improve their accessibility and communication to customers. In 2016, more than half the systems had water quality-related violations. In 2019, 80% reported detectable levels of lead in their drinking water.
According to the WHE, communities of color are at a higher risk of lead exposure. They may not have access to safe, affordable housing or they may face discrimination when trying to find a safe, healthy place to live. This housing inequity puts some children, such as non-Hispanic Black persons, at a greater risk of exposure to lead.
Why is it important to advance water justice along with workforce equity? There are two big reasons: First, the 2016 Pittsburgh lead crisis highlighted how important it is to have open, honest water practices.
Second, according to the Pittsburgh Water Sewage Authority (PWSA) Water Equity Task Force findings, Black contractors are underrepresented in our water systems’ workforce and, when they are employed, the pay is unequal.
“There’s also the contrast of Pittsburgh as a ‘most livable city,’ and human rights inequality, especially for African American men and women,” says Dr. Maseru. Indeed, a Pittsburgh gender equity report and Pittsburgh’s Deplorable Black Living Conditions study notes the need for policy improvement in employment, poverty, and other livability indicators.
After questioning how water systems can prioritize environmental justice and water workforce equity, the PWC created best practice objectives and strategies. What could improve water transparency, access, affordability, quality, and tie in measures of economic progress and community well-being?
The team compared each water system’s performance against a standard set of measurements and prioritized the need for a speedy transformation.
They gathered data through a voluntary survey sent to the 36 water systems — which received a 47% response. To supplement the other 53%, they included WHE data, as well as information they found on the water systems’ websites.
All this information helped the PWC create a vision for structural interventions that will ensure water justice in our region and integrate workforce equity measures from Dr. Maseru’s PWSA findings.
What does the vision look like? “In a just environment, water data will be transparent,” explains Dr. Maseru. “Water system communication with customers will be open and honest. Grievances will be resolved quickly and community input will be welcomed.
“Water will be affordable,” he continues. “When someone has a financial hardship, there will be protection programs in place that are easy to find, understand and use. There will be no shut offs.
“Water will be clean and safe. Lead testing and treatment, if needed, will be free. So will information on service line inventories, full line replacements, compliance with state and federal drinking water quality requirements, and updated protection plans,” he adds.
“There will also be gender, racial, and pay equity within the water system infrastructure.”
To begin turning this just vision into reality, the PWC assessed each water system on transparency, affordability, and quality. They drafted report card “grades” based on the data they’d gathered, sent them to the water systems, and asked for feedback. “Four systems improved their practices and ultimately their grades,” notes Dr. Maseru.
Overall, the water systems’ grades showed ample room for improvement and prompted recommendations from the PWC calling for:
- More state and federal funding
- Supportive structures that help small and struggling water systems remain public.
- Access to drinking water that’s tied to wider measures of health and economic progress.
- Climate change consideration in all planning.
- A plan to deal with emerging contaminant threats — like lead — to water quality.
- Workforce development, such as enhanced equitable contracting and salary-wage equity strategies.
The PWC’s effort and Dr. Maseru’s PWSA workforce analysis is an impressive start to structural interventions that will create equity-oriented solutions to our region’s water justice and workforce equity challenges.
“We’ve learned a lot of lessons since we started this process,” notes Dr. Maseru. “One of the most important is that creating dialogue with the water systems’ leadership resulted in more meaningful information and opportunities for improvement than formal right-to-know processes.”
Thanks to the PWC’s initial research on behalf of water justice, structural interventions can begin to take shape that will make Allegheny county’s water safe, affordable, transparent, and fair to all its citizens.
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