Wet bulb globe temperature from climate model outputs: a method for projecting hourly site-specific values and trends.

Research Square · 2024-06-04

An Uphill Battle: A NC Case Study of Utility Cost Recovery and Customer Affordability

Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation · 2024-02-15

An Uphill Battle: A NC Case Study of Utility Cost Recovery and Customer AffordabilityAbstractWater affordability and utility financial sustainability are increasing concerns for water management in many industrialized parts of the world. (Aspen Institute Energy and Environment Program, 2022; AWWA, 2021). This is in part due to rising water and sewer rates; a study of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US showed that water and sewer rates increased on average 4.2% annually in the past nine years (Bluefield Research 2021). This trend is expected to continue considering 64% of surveyed water utilities planned to increase customer water rates in 2021 (AWWA, 2021). Water service providers rely on their customers to pay their bills in order to generate revenue, so the financial condition of the community/customer base heavily influences the financial condition of every utility. This analysis considers the financial health of a utility by focusing on cost recovery as measured by the Operating Ratio (OR), or the ratio of a utility's operating revenue to its operating expenses, across a range of utility characteristics. The financial capability of a utility was measured using the Affordability Burden (Raucher et al. 2019), which combines poverty prevalence and the financial burden of low-income, i.e., 20th percentile income household, to pay for water services. This presentation will detail research that was performed to empirically explore the link between a utility's financial health and the ability of its customers to afford their bills. This exploration includes additional factors that may affect a utility's ability to cover its costs including the number of customers, the percent of residential customers and water use, the particular demographics of the served population, and other factors that, as of yet, have received surprisingly limited attention. Indeed, results from this study show a measurable and meaningful relationship between household income distribution and utility cost recovery, Figure 1. The research analyzes financial capability and cost recovery among 301 North Carolina water service providers. North Carolina water utilities provide a diversity of size, income, and population conditions. NC water usage quantity and customer type was informed by the 2019 North Carolina Department of Water Resources Local Supply Plans (NC DEQ, 2020). This data was used to calculate average and cumulative residential water usage at the utility level. Additionally, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) database provided the total population served by each utility. Customer income, demographic, population, and water rate information was obtained from the Duke Water Affordability Data Repository (Patterson & Doyle, 2021), which compiles data from the 2019 Census Bureau ACS 5-year survey and utility websites to provide a range of population, affordability, and demographic information such as Median Household Income (MHI), Lowest Quintile Residential Indicator (LQRI), Poverty Prevalence (PP). This database also provided water rate information compiled from utility websites, which was used to determine the monthly residential combined water and sewer bill at 5,000 gallons per month. Poverty prevalence (PP) measures the portion of community households at or below 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL) (Raucher et al., 2019). Affordability Burden (AB) is determined from the combination of LQRI and PP to evaluate the financial burden for the community posed by water sector costs. The LQRI thresholds used to define the AB severity were determined from the percentage of a household's monthly income associated with one and two days of labor, 4.6% and 9.2% respectively (Patterson & Doyle, 2021). Utility operating expenditures and revenue data were obtained from the 2019 annual audit report data submitted to the NC Department of State Treasurer (NC Department of State Treasurer, 2019). These audit reports, submitted annually by NC utilities, municipalities, and counties, include financial information regarding government activities including water, sewer, and stormwater services. The OR for the 301 analyzed utilities was calculated based on one year of financial data. Annual utility financial data was available for 2019 through 2021. To avoid financial distress related to COVID-19, 2019 was selected as a representative year. Therefore, this cost recovery metric provides a snapshot of utility financial performance and would ideally be combined with cash flow analyses to understand a utility's longer term financial condition. The results identify a significant and growing group of communities facing a conflicting dilemma of water affordability and utility cost recovery. Many communities have rates that are already considered unaffordable for low-income households and are also not generating sufficient revenue to cover expenses, indicated by ORs <1, Figure 2. The study results also show that most current interventions are designed to address either household affordability or utility cost recovery, while exacerbating the other. For example, raising rates to improve cost recovery generates additional household and community affordability issues. Alternatively, implementing a customer assistance program (CAP) to help low-income households afford their bills often requires significant utility investment which can impede cost recovery. Population trends indicate that customer bases for many of the struggling utilities in North Carolina are poor, small, and shrinking, which in combination dramatically exacerbate affordability and financial issues, Figure 3. The temptation may be to balance utility budgets by seeking to reduce costs and defer maintenance or infrastructure investments. However, regulatory compliance must be ensured so that consumers trust their water services. The results of the study reveal that now is a critical time for government intervention and investment. Affordable, safe, and reliable water is possible, but will require swift and concerted action. The current disparate management of water services in the United States exacerbates inequalities in water affordability, service, and safety. The presentation will include some strategies for addressing the financial resilience of vulnerable communities and their effectiveness in previous implementations.This paper was presented at the WEF/AWWA Utility Management Conference, February 13-16, 2024.SpeakerAugust, OliviaPresentation time15:30:0016:00:00Session time15:30:0017:00:00SessionUtility Financing - A Multi-Faceted and Long Term EffortSession number27Session locationOregon Convention Center, Portland, OregonTopicFinancial Resilience including funding mechanisms, Rate and Fee studies, and Affordability.TopicFinancial Resilience including funding mechanisms, Rate and Fee studies, and Affordability.Author(s)August, OliviaAuthor(s)O. August1, M. Doyle2, L. Patterson2Author affiliation(s)Hazen and Sawyer 1; Duke University 2;SourceProceedings of the Water Environment FederationDocument typeConference PaperPublisherWater Environment FederationPrint publication date Feb 2024DOI10.2175/193864718825159261Volume / Issue Content sourceUtility Management ConferenceWord count15

Flow‐Dependent Color Patches in a Great Plains River

Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · 2024-07-01 · 1 citations

Abstract Ecosystem structure and its heterogeneity shape ecosystem processes. Ecosystem heterogeneity has been characterized in smaller stream ecosystems dominated by benthic processes. However, in larger river ecosystems structured by water column characteristics including suspended sediment and phytoplankton, ecosystem heterogeneity has not been directly observed. We assessed flow‐dependent ecosystem structure along 230 km of a large, highly managed Great Plains river (The Kansas River) by analyzing 1‐dimensional, downstream color profiles across flow conditions derived from satellite imagery. River color is a robust metric that reflects the combined state of several important large‐river habitat features, specifically suspended sediment, chromophoric dissolved organic matter, and phytoplankton. We found that at flows above a flow threshold that we call Q patch (240 m 3 s −1 ), the entire river was uniformly yellow. At flows below Q patch , the river was generally greener and often had patches of very green water that occurred upstream of run‐of‐river dams. Comparing color with in situ data showed the color patches were likely areas of elevated chlorophyll‐a concentrations from phytoplankton accumulation, indicating that the patches reflected biological processes. Flows were below Q patch on 77% of days during the period of record (1985–present), indicating that the ecosystem spends significant time in a patchy state. Our findings uniquely demonstrate that the water column characteristics structuring temperate, large‐river ecosystems can be patchy.

Emerging roles for finance in river restoration and resilience

Elsevier eBooks · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

Meet the Mississippi <b>The Great River: The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi</b> <i>Boyce Upholt</i> Norton, 2024. 352 pp.

Science · 2024-07-11

A rich introduction captures some but not all the remarkable river has to offer.

Wet bulb globe temperature from climate model outputs: a method for projecting hourly site-specific values and trends

International Journal of Biometeorology · 2024-09-17 · 2 citations

Contributors

Elsevier eBooks · 2024-01-01

Making a market in environmental credits I: Streams of value

Environment and Planning E Nature and Space · 2023-03-15 · 13 citations

This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. They do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we examine the tools, techniques, and people involved in the creation of a value-bearing stream credit out of a physical stream or river site. These observations reveal important principles of how science functions within governance, as well as where gaps and resistances appear that create unforeseen outcomes in market-led policy. We examine the construction and use of instruments that define natural processes as objects with value; these techniques and tools include databases and spreadsheets, algorithms, and field scoring tools that have been scavenged from a wide range of scientific and governance practices and are not themselves inherently capitalist or developed for capitalist purposes. In three different state settings, the move from measure to value is made in different ways that depend on the local institutional and social context. However, they all act to render a network of interacting ecological forces as a field of discrete ecosystem objects amenable to governance with markets.

Financial Capability and Performance: Assessing Trends Among North Carolina Utilities

American Water Works Association · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

Key Takeaways Of 301 analyzed utilities in North Carolina, 51% reported operating revenues less than operating expenditures—operating ratios (ORs) less than 1. Affordability burden and OR were both affected by utilities’ respective population size, population growth or loss rate, and median household income. Annual supplemental funding would be needed to provide all 301 utilities with sufficient revenue to cover operating expenses to ensure ORs are greater than 1. When evaluating consolidation of the utilities into a collective entity, the cumulative revenue of the 301 utilities well exceeded the sum of operating expenses.

Affordability of household water services across the United States

PLOS Water · 2023-05-10 · 23 citations

Households that cannot be able to afford their water bills may lose access to drinking water and wastewater services. This study seeks to quantify how many households may struggle to pay for water services across 787 of the largest drinking water providers located within each state of the United States. Household water affordability is the ability for a household to pay for basic water services without undue hardship. Here, we select 6,000 gallons per month (22.7 m 3 /mo) as sufficient to meet basic needs and define undue hardship as spending more than 4.6% of household income (one day of labor each month) to pay for water services. Monthly bills are combined with census income data based on service area boundaries to determine how many households are spending more than 4.6% of their income on water services. We find that basic water services are unaffordable for 17% of the households (28.3 million persons) in this study. The median, or representative community, has one in seven households spending more than 4.6% of their income paying for water services. We developed a data visualization tool to allow users to explore how affordability challenges change across different volumes of water usage and levels of financial hardship ( https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/water-affordability/water-affordability-united-states ). This research shows that household water unaffordability is not a localized problem but rather is a challenge experienced by households in communities across the nation.