This opinion article was written by GWSC Human-Environmental Analyst, Dr. Penelope Mitchell.

The Myth of Modern Water Access

In the US and other high-income countries, there is a common assumption that water access is universal, clean, affordable, and trustworthy. This “modern water” ideal is closely linked to democratic notions of modern infrastructure.

Yet over the past decade, U.S. cities have faced a rising number of municipal water system failures. High-profile crises in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, have drawn national attention. Meanwhile, extreme weather events like the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, 2024 Asheville floods, and 2021 Houston freeze have also disrupted water systems. Many less-publicized issues—such as water shut-offs and reliance on vendors—highlight a growing vulnerability.

A new paper by Jepson et al. (2025) argues that the U.S. has moved beyond “peak water security.” More households are experiencing unsafe, inadequate, expensive, or unreliable water due to compounding effects from degrading infrastructure, institutional inertia, and increasing hydrological risk.

Origins of the HWISE Scale

The Household Water InSecurity Experiences – Research Coordination Network (HWISE-RCN) began developing the HWISE scale in 2017. The goal was to address gaps in household-level water security metrics for low- and middle-income countries across diverse cultural and ecological contexts.

HWISE researchers later sought to adapt the scale for high-income countries. Their objective was to challenge the “myth of modern water” with empirical data.

I had the pleasure of attending an HWISE workshop in November 2023, where, following pilot tests of the adapted survey in Detroit and Phoenix, water scholars and practitioners came together to further discuss and refine the survey’s water insecurity constructs.

Launching the HWISE-USA Survey Protocol

Fast forward to August 2025, and an HWISE-USA survey protocol paper by Pearson et al.—including the November 2023 workshop participants as co-authors—has just been published, here. The survey gets at six constructs of household water insecurity by asking questions about water affordability, quality, quantity, reliability, emotions—to understand negative emotions and related stress responses, and approach coping including severity of impacts. The cluster sampling strategy requires that selected sites exhibit at least one of the following water-related challenges:

1) access taken or never provided

2) degraded infrastructure or poor water management

3) hydrological risk, e.g. drought events, salt-water intrusion, flooding.

This carefully designed strategy can help stakeholders better understand local variation in water insecurity to promote prioritized resource allocation, especially in urgent contexts such as disaster recovery.

Why Measuring Water Insecurity Matters

Ultimately, there is a pressing need for more data and metrics to capture the complex experiences of household and individual water insecurity, and the HWISE-USA survey instrument represents a critical first step in understanding these issues in high-income contexts.

I look forward to seeing how the results might inform future research, spark dialogue, and promote meaningful change.