This study examines the geography of water and poverty in the western U.S. following on the groundbreaking work by F. Lee Brown and Helen Ingram in 1987. Previous research has focused on areas of widespread rural poverty (e.g., Indian reservations and counties with Hispanic populations), but it has not encompassed the acute water problems faced by low income urban, suburban, or rural populations in otherwise prosperous regions, nor has it adopted a geographic perspective on the structure and prevalence of these problems. It is hypothesized that acute water problems are driven by land use processes, spatially linked by water rights administration, and mitigated or exacerbated by different forms of water organizations. By combining structured interviews with field mapping methods, this research will describe and explain the geographic distribution of acute water problems at the county and watershed scale in Colorado. By compiling these local interviews and maps within a river basin framework, it will identify spatial linkages among the acute water problems faced by low income groups in headwater, tributary, mainstem, and groundwater-fed subregions of the state. By interviewing and mapping within a sample of water districts, the research will assess the difference that institutions make in mitigating, or aggravating, the acute water problems faced by low-income groups.
Acute water problems faced by low-income persons in Colorado include inadequate and unsafe domestic water supplies, unsafe floodplain occupance, vulnerability to waterborne disease and industrial contamination, and shut-off of water supplies to poor members of urban and rural water districts. Water rights administrators, county land use planners, environmental health officers, and welfare officers will be interviewed to describe and explain the geographic location and magnitude of acute water problems. It will compile results from local areas to better understand how problems, and solutions, that occur in montane, foothills, and plains regions of major river basins (e.g., the South Platte, Upper Arkansas, Upper Rio Grande, and Upper Colorado) are related to one another. In addition to basic scientific research on water problems that are poorly documented and understood, the research addresses growing social concerns about the safety, reliability, and vulnerability of regional water supplies.
