Author ORCID Identifier
George C. Homsy: 0000-0002-4470-1437
Mildred E. Warner: 0000-0002-0109-338X
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Keywords
drinking water disconnection (shutoff), water resource management, municipal ownership
Abstract
What differentiates local governments that implement water policies on equity and the environment? Analyzing a 2015 survey of 1,897 U.S. municipalities, we find municipalities that own their water utilities more likely have policies to protect low-income residents from disconnection and to implement water resource management. Respondents from 8% of municipalities report protecting residents from disconnection. State economic regulation of publicly owned utilities and Democrat-majority municipal governments are positively associated with policies protecting low-income households from shutoffs but bear no association with resource management. Public ownership of utilities and state economic regulation may play a role in meeting water policy goals.
Publisher Attribution
Recommended Citation
Homsy, G.C., Warner, M.E., Does public ownership of utilities matter for localgovernment water policies?, Utilities Policy (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2020.101057
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Comments
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