About 1 in 7 U.S. households may be facing financial challenges in paying utilities for access to both water and wastewater services, a new study has found.  

The cost of these services has surged alongside an expanding income gap — fueling concerns about affordability, according to the study, published on Wednesday in PLOS Water.  

Nationwide predicament: “Household water unaffordability is not a localized problem,” wrote the researchers, led by Lauren Patterson of Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Rather, they explained, this inability to afford basic services “is a challenge experienced by households in communities across the nation.” 

A day’s work for water: Seeking to address these concerns, Patterson and her colleagues analyzed the affordability of water services for households served by the nation’s 787 largest utilities.  

• They probed the number of households spending more than 4.6 percent of their monthly income — about one workday’s pay — to purchase 6,000 gallons of water per month. 
  
  
• This is about the quantity of water considered sufficient to meet basic household needs. 

What did they find? They determined that a total of 17.1 percent of households in their study — or about 28.3 million people — spent more than that 4.6 percent of their monthly income on water each month.

• A median of 15.3 percent of households, or 1 in 7, were coping with this degree of water unaffordability. 
  
  
• Some drivers of this phenomenon include aging infrastructure, climate change and low household income.  

Where are Americans most affected? The research showed that households struggling to afford water services were located across all states and regions of the U.S.  

But that doesn’t mean everyone pays the same price for water services; The study identified considerable variability in costs among communities and geographic regions. 

What kinds of variations? Median monthly bills varied by region — ranging from $68 in the Great Plains to $95 in the Pacific Northwest and $96 in the Mid-Atlantic.  

• Of those areas with higher median monthly bills, the Mid-Atlantic generally had more expensive water services.  
  
  
• But the authors stressed that affordability is affected not only by the cost of services but also by income distribution.  

And the unaffordability breakdown? The authors calculated the regional prevalence of such circumstances by accounting for poverty levels, household income and median monthly bills. 

The percentage of households that struggle to afford water and wastewater services in each region was the following: 

• Pacific Northwest: 15.9 percent 
• Great Plains: 13 percent 
• Southwest: 11.2 percent 
• Mid-South: 12 percent 
• Southeast: 17.4 percent 
• Midwest: 16.7 percent 
• Mid-Atlantic: 18.5 percent 
• Northeast: 16.6 percent 

Involving the public: To help empower members of the public on a regional basis, the study authors have also launched an interactive tool that shows location-based affordability changes. 

Getting to the root of the issue: “While the majority of households in the U.S. have clean water and can afford the costs of basic water services, millions do not,” Patterson and her colleagues stated. 

Changing the status quo will require both local and federal action that addresses “the drivers of high costs, as well as income disparities that underlie poverty and drive water affordability challenges,” the authors added.