Sustainable wastewater management for underserved communities using federal infrastructure funds: Barriers, bottlenecks, and tradeoffs

Abstract

Despite increases in federal infrastructure funding that could provide adequate wastewater management for thousands of U.S. communities, the pace of progress in small, underserved communities has been disappointing. This article addresses the major system typologies that can be implemented and the obstacles that are preventing many such communities from receiving funding and implementing systems. While preference for disadvantaged communities is incorporated into federal funding opportunities and many stakeholders prioritize the neediest communities, the embedded perverse incentives and asymmetric information present substantive obstacles to these goals. Small communities and other stakeholders have often found their efforts frustrated by a system that was designed for larger municipalities (or higher-income communities) with greater internal capacity and which is highly dependent on engineering firms, most of which prefer large projects with conventional technological approaches. Novel approaches that show promise in enabling sustainable wastewater management in low-population density, underserved communities are those that leverage existing infrastructure (e.g., gravity sewer, high-speed internet) with recent innovations in infrastructure and management (e.g., liquid-only sewer, centralized management of decentralized infrastructure) and/or incorporate creative approaches to funding and technical assistance.