Research to Promote Sustainable and Equitable Access to Clean Water

In 2014, the city of Flint, MI, switched its municipal drinking water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, sparking a public health crisis that made national headlines: This switch caused pipes to corrode and leach lead and other contaminants into the drinking water supply. Residents were told not to drink the tap water unless it had gone through a specific filter to remove lead. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, significant increases in physical and mental health concerns tied to lead exposure were reported. 

While the Flint, MI, water crisis gained national attention, it was far from an isolated incident. Detectable levels of lead and other contaminants are commonly found in drinking water across the United States today. A 2023 study published by UMass Amherst civil and environmental engineers in the American Water Works Association’s journal Water Science found elevated lead levels in drinking water at half of schools and daycare centers in Massachusetts built in the 1960s and 1970s—about 30 percent of all schools tested.

Drinking water is a key societal resource and one that faces numerous complex challenges and threats:

• Currently in the United States, public water supply is provided by more than 50,000 independent systems, many of which have old infrastructure and lack the finances to maintain and upgrade it.
• While much of the South and Western U.S. struggles with having a sufficient water supply, regions in the eastern half of the country often face an overabundance of water, which can lead to flooding and water quality degradation.
• The effects of climate change, environmental degradation, and emerging contaminants—including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and harmful algal blooms—further complicate the challenge of supplying safe and adequate drinking water to the public. 
• There are equity concerns regarding this vital resource, with rural communities and people from historically marginalized groups having less access overall to clean, publicly supplied drinking water.

A Track Record of Leadership in Water Research

Since the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the enactment of the Clean Water Act in the early 1970s, UMass Amherst has been a leader in water research and technological development to address these complex issues. In close collaboration with state agencies and industry, researchers across UMass schools and colleges are advancing knowledge and translating research into solutions in areas such as:

•    Treatment technologies
•    Water distribution systems
•    Wastewater nutrient recovery
•    Water resources under climate change
•    Remote sensing  
•    Machine learning
•    Policy and economics 

Now, an effort is underway to bring together researchers in these diverse areas at UMass Amherst and across the Five College Consortium into a vibrant research community. This new initiative aims to accelerate innovation in the water sector through research, training, and outreach. 

Image

“At UMass, we have so much expertise to offer the world,” says Emily Kumpel, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and one of the faculty members leading the new water initiative. A convening meeting held in January 2024 drew about three dozen faculty members from a variety of disciplines spanning the UMass Amherst College of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences, and Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, as well as nearby Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, partners in the Five College Consortium with UMass Amherst.

“This initiative will enable new collaborations and sharing of ideas while raising the visibility of important research among key stakeholders and fostering even more engagement with state agencies and industry,” she says.

Also leading the initiative is Casey Brown, provost professor of civil and environmental engineering. “We aim to be a center of excellence on issues of water and the go-to place throughout the Northeast for state agencies and utilities to find water expertise,” says Brown.

Planning for an Uncertain Future

With aging infrastructure posing an ongoing threat to the safety of the water supply, the Biden-Harris administration has dedicated more than $20 billion from the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed in 2021, to water infrastructure improvements to date.

“Replacing old lead pipes is a huge opportunity to fix past mistakes and will require a massive financial investment,” says Kumpel. “How do we do so in the best possible way, ensuring that what we put in place will still work for conditions in 50 years and won’t create new problems?”

Planning for such an uncertain future requires an interdisciplinary approach, which the new UMass water initiative is well-positioned to take on. Engineers and computer scientists are working on new technologies, using remote sensing and machine learning, to improve the functioning of legacy infrastructure. New water treatment technologies are being developed to treat emerging contaminants, including PFAS, with lower environmental impact. Policy experts and economists are studying how to make smart decisions about infrastructure investments, while other social scientists are working to ensure that progress is shared equitably and is inclusive of traditionally underserved communities.

“The scale of these problems requires all these different angles to come together,” explains Kumpel.

Anita Milman, a professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation and another leader of this initiative, conducts research on water governance. She currently is working on two projects supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which address drinking water systems in the United States. One project examines challenges faced by small drinking water systems—which constitute the bulk of the more than 50,000 systems across the country—and explores the potential for informal and formal partnerships to help these systems, as well as the effects of state-level policies on partnership formation. The other project examines how managers of medium-sized drinking water systems evaluate and make decisions that have trade-offs between operational and management goals.

Image

Shifting conditions due to climate change pose one of the biggest challenges of all. Brown’s research focuses on managing water resources while adapting to a changing climate.

“All our current policies and management approaches for water are based on the idea that the historical climate will stay constant into the future,” says Brown. “But the effects of climate change have an acute impact on water. [Water utility providers] need climate science that targets the specific issues and risks they face, and that largely doesn’t exist right now. There’s a huge opportunity for our research to make a difference for them.”

Brown was recently part of a team of UMass researchers that won a $5.5 million Accelerating Research Translation award from the NSF to support and expand efforts to translate research conducted in campus laboratories into tangible solutions to real-world problems.

Translating research for state agencies and industry is a key theme of UMass water research. Many UMass faculty are already working on such projects in partnership with the state. For example, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection is currently sponsoring at least five separate research projects in the UMass Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, on topics including lead in drinking water in Massachusetts schools, support for small water systems, cybersecurity for small water systems, COVID-19 monitoring in wastewater, and treatment and removal of PFAS and emerging contaminants.

“Most of these projects are aligned with needs identified by the state, where UMass has been able to provide research, technical support, and expertise,” says Kumpel. 

The water initiative will also support the commonwealth through workforce development. This central body will bolster existing opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students across numerous departments at UMass, as well as the Five Colleges, for education and participation in research.

"This initiative will create a community through which students can more easily network with peers and access faculty in different departments for cross-disciplinary work,” says Brown.

This story was originally published in March 2024.